Written by Caroline McCullagh, book review editor, Mensa Bulletin: The Magazine of American Mensa, March 2022, pp. 24-25.
It seems Edward Mickolus can write books faster than I can review them. This month’s is The Creativity Sourcebook: The Daily Guide to Unleashing Your Creativity. It’s both fun and useful. It’s a small book at 44 pages, but it’s packed. The author has combined his penchant for collecting interesting quotations with ideas on maximizing your creativity no matter the nature of your activity.
He groups the ideas and quotations in seven sections, one for each day of the week: Myth Debunker Monday, Thinking Tools Tuesday, Website Wednesday, Thinking Techniques Thursday, Failure is Your Friend Friday, Saturday Sayings, and Sunday Reading (a list of other relevant books).
Among the good ideas in The Creativity Sourcebook, Mickolus reminds us that the creative part of our mind must be fired up and separate from the analytical and critical part. In something particularly relevant to this column, he quotes Sibelius saying, “Pay no attention to what critics say. There has never been a statue set up in honor of a critic.” And that especially includes the critic in your own brain.
I recommend this book to any creative people, including you authors, who would like some suggestions for new ways to look at the world.
