The Creative Life

August 16, 2010
In her life, Cameron has learned to seize whatever moments of creative time she can get. "Small tidbits add up to a larger whole," she says, one of the compact yet insightful truisms that make up this volume of enlightening analogies, confessions, and vignettes of Cameron's life on New York's Upper West Side. From dinners and musicals to teaching engagements and writing sessions, Cameron's latest contribution to her already extensive list of titles is something of a diary, exposing her personal life with unexpected honesty and humility. A spat with her inner censor, a made up "gay British designer" she's named Nigel, gives the book a light-hearted and relatable tone. Colorful characters, including actors turned writers, musicians turned songwriters, poets turned playwrights, and songwriter-bakers, make up an encouraging community of creators. Practical, productive, and passionate, Cameron and her Believing Mirrors ("people who see our power and potential and reflect it back at us") show the artistic way in an organic light that makes it seem approachable and attainable, revealing how living creatively can be as calibrated as a work of fiction.

September 15, 2010

Writing in short, easily digestible chapters, Cameron (The Sound of Paper: Starting from Scratch) encourages readers to weave their inner creativity into their everyday lives. She demonstrates, through diary-like vignettes, how the most everyday activity--e.g., walking dogs--can be seen as an artistic pursuit. The beauty of this book is that Cameron details the ordinariness of it all. One does not live on a roller-coaster ride of creative excitement. Yet one can still live the artistic life and offer good things to the world. Cameron's guide would be of particular help to new artists or those who fear they don't have the "magic" art requires.

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