Creating a Life Worth Living [Paperback]

Many of us don't fit into the conventional career mold, particularly those of us who work--or aspire to work--in creative capacities. Quality-of-life seekers will feel affirmed upon reading Carol Lloyd's Creating a Life Worth Living, in which she posits, "You are actively searching for two things: the creative life you want to lead and the way to create and maintain that life so that you are as sane and as happy and as financially solvent as you want to be." Not just for those engaged specifically in the arts, Creating a Life Worth Living is for everyone who realizes the need to approach their personal and career problems in a more creative way.

"Every life can benefit from the brilliance and thrill of unleashed creativity," argues Lloyd, "but there are some professions that cannot survive without it." Citing fields as wildly divergent as events planning, teaching, and electronic media (as well as those in the arts), Lloyd outlines nothing less than a plan for reinventing a life. The tasks taken from her workshop encourage readers to investigate old belief systems, then generate new ones. Adding to the book's richness and diversity of resources are writing exercises that provoke awareness, art assignments, and interviews with such artists as vocalist Meredith Monk and writer Mary Gaitskill. Creating a Life Worth Living helps readers focus on and respect a part of the self too often lost amidst the larger pressures to conform.

Dreaming is easy. Making it happen is hard. With a fresh perspective, Carol Lloyd motivates the person searching for two things: the creative life and a life of sanity, happiness and financial solvency. Creating a Life Worth Living is for the hundreds of thousands of people who bought Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, but who are looking for more down-to-earth solutions and concrete tasks for achieving their goals.

Creating a Life Worth Living helps the reader search memory for inspiration, understand his or her individual artistic profile, explore possible futures, design a daily process and build a structure of support. Each of the 12 chapters, such as "The Drudge We Do For Dollars" and "Excavating the Future," contains specific exercises and daily tasks that help readers to clarify their desires and create a tangible plan of action for realizing dreams. The book also provides inspiring anecdotes and interviews with people who have succeeded in their chosen fields, such as performance artist Anna Devere Smith, writer Sally Tisdale and filmmaker R. J. Cutler.

The pursuit of one's dreams is one of the great joys in life but also one of the most terrifying. Creating a Life Worth Living is an invaluable road map for this journey, guiding readers as they take the first tentative steps that are necessary before they can fly.

Carol Lloyd, a writer, performer, and entrepreneur, is the founder of The Writing Parlor, a San Francisco literary arts center. For the past seven years, she has led Life Worth Living workshops, helping hundreds attain their creative dreams. Her essay and short fiction have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Focus, and Salon magazine, where she is a regular contributor.