I did like some of the ideas put out in this book, but again with this series the graphs/imagery had put me off. The writing in this one I actually did like. The points made in this book and the references seem to be okay places to continue on if interested.

Being Creative: Be inspired. Unlock your Originality focuses on pulling out the creative side of the reader. While I thought there were many great points and tricks, the book just didn’t seem to connect with me on the level I had hoped for. While there were some great thoughts, several of the topics were things I already innately do as a creative person. This may help someone who is not at all creative, but I feel like it may be redundant for the creative types that are drawn to it. However, there were many great activities in the five sections that seem like they could help someone who struggles with creativity.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Being Creative: Be Inspired.

Unlock Your Originality 20 thought-provoking lessons by Michael Atavar is a book published by While Lion Publishing.
Divided in five sections: Beginning, Using Process, Keeping Going, Being Resourceful, Challeges and Difficulties wants to let you find as adds the author at the beginning of this book your "Original Self." This book was born for helping you to find your own and unique voice. You could be a writer, a painter, a reporter; someone in love for scrapbooking, journaling; in the process of creating something.
You are the creator of your own creativity and your own creations and no one else.
Looking outside is never positive; you must search inside what it is important and what it is inspiring you in this precise instant.
Many important tips from the author; let's remember at first the use of cheap journals, and tools for starting in progression, spending few money, and seeing what it is borning from your creative inner world.
It is also important at first to give voice at what you have in your heart, wildly, giving expression at your internal freedom, writing down with freedom, drawing with passion, looking at the reality with the eyes and sensibility you have in your heart, without any kind of preclusion.
Following 20 practical exercises all visuals, you will see that what you see in your heart will become slowly, reality.

I love this book, although I would have thought at a different color for the cover, including the ones of internal pages, more colored and animated, more relaxing, and friendly.

I thank NetGalley and Quarto Books for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

I've always had lots and lots of ideas, and I always have 2 or 3 notebooks around for jotting them down. This is the most important subject in the book for me.
The rest is far too abstract, and the ideas seem to be useful only for art, not the real world. In the practical world, you look at similar objects to those you want ideas for, in order to get and develop concrete stuff.
I'm not saying the book is really bad, it will be useful for some, but not for me.
What I really don't like are all the nonsense illustrations, instead of practical ones.

There are many positive things about this book. My main negative is that it does not connect with me in a digital format. It is designed to be used as and with a notebook type binding. I was interested in the assignments and exercises, but felt like I would have gotten much more out of this as a companion to a group class.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Parts did resonate: Creativity is in you; you have to unlock it making a habit of taking small steps, and the internal camera is an exercise I will undoubtedly put into practice. The last chapter; saying goodbye to ideas that don't work, do it yourself, and put your work out there: Making decisions, make sense too. It's hard for creatives to let go, whether a project is successful or not. But overall, I found it repetitive and, it lacks depth and examples making it too abstract.

This book has a practical approach to creativity that has plenty of good stuff in it. Each chapter includes exercises designed to give you plenty of raw material for creativity and ways to make connection and expand that material. The book is divided into sections, each ending with a summary toolkit that encapsulates the exercises and processes.

That's the good part. The design of the book however gets in the way of this excellence. I understand that as a graphic designer Avatar is concerned with the look of things, but does this have to make the book look like an overly padded brochure for his work? He uses a sans serif font that is a little hard to read with text in two columns taking up only about a third of the page. I know white space on the page is nice, but that's just silly. Sometimes the pages have illustrations which are simple with figures that look like the silhouettes on signs. Each chapter opens with, I'm not kidding, two pages of the intricate round number monograms. It isn't simple enough just to use the number 4 and get on with it, we must be treated to this design both large on one page and then smaller and repeated filling up the next. Then each section ends with a two-page quote, I guess inspirational, in large heavy black block capitals on a bright yellow page. I feel as if I'm looking at a book illustrated with traffic signs!

If it had not been so over-designed the book would be a third its current length.

The whole thing feels forced and often more like a student's graphic design project of another's work than of a book intended to be helpful for serious people in creative endeavors.

I would pass this book by.

Atavar has produced a unique book that enables readers to believe in their own creative possibilities. The author presents his lessons on bringing forth one's ability to see alongside exercises that do not require extensive planning or materials. The beauty of this combination is its feeling of being a natural process along with his guided encouragement that we already possess the tools we need. As a teacher of art and design I find Atavar's approaches to be refreshingly different and easy to utilize.

Honestly, I found this book very dull look wise. It wasn't very creative and looked like generic computer created clip art with a horrible color scheme. The look of the book did not inspire me at all.
Putting aside the aesthetics., i didn't find the book all that exciting. I am glad that I read these exercises in a book and didn't go to a workshop. Everything was writing things down. For me that isn't very helpful. I do better when I get my hands on things such as color swatches as a paint store, looking through photos being out in nature, etc. Having a notebook is handy so you write down what you see and collect things like leaves between it's pages but the activities were just not the way I learn.
If you are a very analytical person, then this may be a better book for sparking creativity,

Being Creative caught my attention as someone who works in the creative field and is often looking for a fresh take on similar work situations. I think this book would be great for someone just started out that is hoping to get out of their comfort zone. The format of the book allows the reader to take in some of the content and then complete an activity to allow them to practice some of the advice and suggestions. The further learning sections at the end of each chapter were a great way to take this information and put it into use in your daily work life.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Being Creative: Be inspired. Unlock your originality" by Michael Atavar.

I really loved it! Really well done. Easy to follow, colourful, and it makes you want to get creative!
Full of good advice, exercices, note pads...
The chapters are well done, well divided.

Some things seem obvious yet I never thought about it like that before. Like making a commitment to write a number of words everyday at the same time and same place. That consistency and regularity are important.

Years ago, I used to write a lot of fanfictions as a hobby, then upload them online, I would spend hours writing (10 to 15 chapters a day, or 30 to 50 pages) and would enjoy it so much! I would look out the window and see ideas happening before my eyes! Then I started suffering from writer's block... There is nothing worse than sitting and staring at a blank page! So frustrating!

I will try those advice in depth next weekend.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book. This is my honest review. All opinions are my own.

This would be a good text for beginning creative writing classes or for people who are not naturally creative. Many exercises to get you out of your comfort level are featured, as well as exercises to help you look at things from a vastly different perspective. Seasoned writers and other creatives might, however, find these exercises a bit too time-consuming.

Unfortunately I cannot read this book despite trying to download it several times. All other books I have downloaded recently in this protected pdf format from netgallery are fine, so I am very disappointed as this is a big area of interest for me. I did contact the publisher to see if they could email a copy in a different format but they said they could not.

I like the message this book is imparting. That creative is something you are. It's inside you. The book is broken into 5 sections, each with 4 ideas around how to get you more and more into the creative mindset and to unlock the creativity within you.

The first section really resonated with me, the idea of beginner's mind, starting small and reducing the size, and even consistency. I have done all of these in my own work and they do work like magic. I love the sentiment that "we don't push the difficulty away. we don't put it off until tomorrow. We stay with it now - with all the terror it induces."

I also liked some of the new-to-me ideas like "internal camera" and "prepared piano." There are other ideas that I don't use regularly but make sense tome like making small changes daily, like your first thought being your best one, like not theorizing.

I also loved this: "Remind yourself each day that you have some responsibility for your creativity. You can change things."

At its core, this book comes with this message: "Abandon the illusion of creativity. Instead, address what's there....Be free of the mess."

I love the ideas in this book.

Here's where it fell a bit short for me: The format of the book was hard for me to get into, I felt like there was a lot of repetition, the chapters were too short, not enough details for the ideas and not enough solid examples. It was a bit too abstract at parts where I wasn't sure I understood what he was saying fully. I could have used a bit more depth.

At the end of each section, there's a "further learning" section which is full of things to read, listen, study and visit. They are delightful and wide-ranging and add so much depth to this book. I loved reading each of them and I can't wait to dive into many of them.

On the whole, I am glad I read this book and I feel energized to keep creating and to heed the reminder to "stay with yourself as the only source of creativity - it's not out there but inside you. You are the receptacle of all things creative."

How can one not be inspired by that?

i received an advanced copy of this in return for an honest review. thank you to netgalley and the publisher.