Lynn WiezyckiI read a lot! I devour fiction and read non-fiction to bring me back to reality! This book, “The Creative Fight: Create Your Best Work and Live the Life You Imagine” by Chris Orwig, attracted my attention because I know the author
is a really terrific photographer. I wanted to see what he had to say that might resonate with me. I have read other books for “creatives” and usually only got about a third of the way through and
stopped reading due to boredom. That was not the case with this one! The author grabbed me at the start and I wanted more all the way through the book.
Right in the Introduction he grabs your attention with passages like “It begins with deciding to stop waiting for inspiration and start taking action ourselves”. In each chapter he gives us small vignettes of other creatives’ lives.
These were ordinary people who ended up doing not such ordinary things. Some of these folks ended up famous and some didn’t but they all went forward with the creative process in their chosen creative field.
The author does not use photographers for most of his examples but does use his own experiences and those of some of his photographer friends and contemporaries to illustrate the points he is making through out the book.
These examples brought all the ideas closer to home for me.
Some of the other passages that I felt hit the mark were: “Creativity is raw energy for life. It is unpredictable and fierce. It is wild, elusive and untamed.” “The value of critiquing someone else’s work is that it makes you think about your own”.
“Creativity is not a problem to be solved but a practice to be enjoyed. Like a good travel book, it will become better when you take the journey yourself.” My favorite: “Embrace the wild that races through your heart”.
There are many interesting photos in the book that are symbolic of the concepts put forth and from there simplicity, clarify and solidify those concepts.
The book is set up as a work book with exercises at the end of each chapter. These exercises, whether actually done or not, will make you think a bit deeper about the concepts discussed in each chapter and reinforce the need for that type of thinking & living.
I highly recommend this book for any one interested in a creative endeavor but I especially recommend it to any photographer who might need that little push to step outside of that comfort zone and drop over that creative edge! Enjoy!
Click on the image above for more info on this book.
That is all for now!
Lynn
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