Eric Maisel, prolific writer and creativity coach extraordinaire, has launched a new creativity resource with his wife, Ann Maisel.

Think­ing about writ­ing a mys­tery? Need to raise money to pro­duce your album? Need help as a begin­ning cos­tume designer? Want to give more pow­er­ful audi­tions? Look­ing for inspi­ra­tion as a tex­tile artist?

You’ve come to the right place!

My name is Eric Maisel and I’ve invited cre­ative and per­form­ing artists from around the world to share their expe­ri­ences and their exper­tise with you—for free. Our World Salon is a world­wide com­mu­nity of cre­ative indi­vid­u­als from all walks of life who are look­ing for com­mu­nity, resources, and a place to feel heard and under­stood. We hope that the World Salon will become that place.

Our fea­tures include a library of Ten Tip pdfs that you can down­load imme­di­ately, read, and use. And we’ll be adding more all the time! We have a fea­ture called World­wide Per­spec­tives where more than a hun­dred cre­ative and per­form­ing artists from around the world share their expe­ri­ences in “Let­ter From” columns (for exam­ple, “Let­ter from Los Ange­les,” “Let­ter from Lon­don,” and “Let­ter from Berlin”). We have other fea­tures, too, like an artist’s voice fea­ture, links to great arti­cles, a coach’s cor­ner, a philosopher’s corner—please look around!

I hope that you’ll want to con­tribute to our com­mu­nity. Many of our fea­tures are open to you. Look around, see what inter­ests you, and join our world­wide com­mu­nity of contributors!

Please enjoy your visit.

Check it out!

We’ll be regularly updating this listing — so please don’t be shy about letting us know about an online course you loved or your own upcoming class. Just send the info in an e-mail to creativereality (at) live.com.

Enjoy!

WOW! (Women on Writing)

• Novel Writing: Choosing a Method that Works Best for You

• The Incredible Shrunken Manuscript: How to Diagnose Your Novel’s Strengths & Weaknesses

From the site’s About page:

WOW! is a global magazine, designed to support women’s creativity, energy, blood, sweat and tears, throughout all stages of the writing process. We envision Wow! being a favorite watering hole for professionals, the up-and-coming, and the recipients of our labors — the avid readers.

Our concept is unique, as it fills in the missing gap between writing websites and women’s magazines. We are dedicated to raising the overall standards within the writing community, and devote an active profile within writing industry associations, organizations and websites.

Ultimately, WOW! hopes to contribute to the love, enjoyment and excitement of producing quality writing — so that the reader in all of us will never want for good material, in any form.

This guy had done his research. He knew my site well and seemed genuinely impressed with my work, the layout, the photography and the navigation. Overall, he truly liked the site. He said he found me on the 24th page of a Google search for “artisan jewelry” while doing some research for another client. And yep, he was right; very few, if any, people are going to find me on the 24th page of a Google search. One of my goals for my jewelry business this year was to investigate more internet marketing opportunities, and maybe he just caught me at a good time. He offered me the search phrase “lampwork jewelry” at what I thought was a pretty reasonable rate. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, so he gave me some examples of other clients he represented and the search phrases for them, and I checked them out while I was on the phone with him (the benefit of having broadband internet service!). After talking to him for about 30 minutes and pulling up his business online while I was talking to him to make sure he was truly legit, I finally bit the hook. So, now what, you ask? Well, enter “lampwork jewelry” into your Google search bar and see what you get. It only works for Google, but Google is pretty darn popular, don’t you think? Only time will tell if it’s worth it or not, but it’s month to month and I can cancel at any time so I figured I’d give it a few months and see what happens! Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day are just around the corner.

The New Writer’s Handbook: 2007 and The New Writer’s Handbook: Volume 2. Ed. By Philip Martin. Scarletta Press, 2007 and 2008: $16.95. This annual anthology of articles by notable authors, journalists, writing instructors, editors, agents, and literary bloggers offers writers advice on their craft and careers, including how-to pieces and topics on professional issues and the creative process.

I immediately regretted using my recent winnings from the weekly creativity contest for a Santa purchase. I may have to wait until father time welcomes his new baby — and the approach of my birthday — to splurge on this for myself, but maybe the rest of our writers might be able to benefit from my neat find. Maybe you can drop a stocking hint to your husband, by leaving your laptop open on the kitchen table where he can see this blog   Enjoy!

Some of you may have noticed the Creative Every Day icon in our sidebar. This site was created by Leah Piken Kolidas, an artist and blogger. Part of the site is dedicated to the Creative Every Day 2008 challenge, which encourages daily creativity regardless of media or creative outlet.  Leah writes:

“Here are the basics first! Creative Every Day 2008 is a new challenge I’ve started to help infuse my life and lives of others with daily creativity….Creativity is meant in the broadest sense, so it doesn’t have to be something art related. Your creative acts could be in cooking, taking pictures, knitting, doodling, writing, dancing, decorating, or making art in the form of collage, paint, or clay or whatever!”

Every time I visit this site, I am impressed by the wealth of what others are creating. I like Leah’s broad application of creativity, because it helps me to be more mindful of what creativity really means. All of those “other” creative outlets serve to bolster my “real” art, if I let the edges blur together. For me, blending creativity into the mundane parts of domesticity that I can’t escape (cooking, cleaning, driving, etc.) make me feel less like a drone and more like a creative person who lives in the moment, taking in the beauty even if it’s just lying quietly in a bowl of perfect tangerines.