In Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, writing is a therapeutic action to practice every morning. For three pages you let yourself stumble out your worries in writing in order to name them, set them aside, and begin the day fresh.

Alissa Torres will share her practices with this craft, and have participants writing, in an upcoming workshop at Mid-Manhattan Library called Writing for Wellness. In dealing with tragedy, Alissa used writing to memorialize her lost loved one,  to create a place of memory and calm to hold in her thoughts. She writes about her experience in a recent Salon article and in a graphic memoir called American Widow.

There are many takes on how to use writing and creativity to relieve stress, to find peace, or to organize one’s thoughts and increase the output of one’s ideas.  Listed below are a few titles to take on the task of helping to find a sense of wellness in life:

Syllabus by Lynda Barry

A look at the artist’s notebooks where she works through her ideas on how to teach a course on recording one’s own creativity.

Cultivating Creativity: Daily Rituals for Visual Inspiration by Maria Fabrizio

Everyday practices to help ideas flourish.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

The author’s adventures in traveling and writing in search of fulfillment.

The Accidental Masterpiece: on the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman

Looks to works of art as a source of inspiration in our lives.

Daily Painting: Paint Small and Often to Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Artist by Carol Marine

Helping you create a routine for self-improvement and meeting goals.

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

Marking her life and finding guidance through the books she has read.

Creativity: The Perfect Crime by Philip Petit

Finding ways to creativity and wellness goes beyond the page with the man who walked on a wire between the Twin Towers.

Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson

Sometimes a six-month stint in the Siberian tiaga alone with your journal is what it takes to rejuvenate yourself.

The Muse and the Maze: Writing as Puzzle, Mystery and Magic by Peter Turchi

Puzzling through life’s dilemmas and mysteries while writing.

What books do you look to as guides to having a mindful day, for meditative writing, and to inspire your creative practices?

Join us:

Writing for Wellness
Saturday, January 16, 2016
11 AM - 12:30 PM
Mid-Manhattan Library, 2nd Floor Classroom