“Marry Your Muse: Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity.” By Jan Phillips, Oct. 1997, Paperback, $12.98, 268 pages, Quest Books.
Some very creative and insanely talented people have more trouble truly committing to their art than to even the most fickle romantic partner. “Marry Your Muse: Making A Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity” is a book authored by Jan Phillips that focuses on the truest “marriage” for artists, photographers and writers — the union of body and soul to their own creativity.
Phillips, who is an award-winning writer and photographer and renowned lecturer, encourages artists of all kinds to move from dreaming into action in her work published by Quest Books. She also has released a six-CD “Marry Your Muse” audio workshop available from another metaphysical publisher, Sounds True.
The book version of “Marry Your Muse” has a beautiful cover with a silhouetted dancer, a gentle sunset and ocean waves. Its imprinting promises “a complete course in creative expression” and Phillips delivers just that with more than 250 pages of text.
As Phillips also focuses her life’s work on spiritual healing, the end of each chapter offers not only artistic actions but personal meditations that can help mend any pain blocking one’s ability to “Marry Your Muse.” Exercises include everything from listening to music to working with modeling clay to watching a movie to meditation to recalling childhood memories in writing. Each action is geared to promote one’s truest self through artistic expression. This helps cement “Marry Your Muse” as a timeless book ideal for artists and writers at all levels of their creative journey.
Each chapter of the first section of the work is encouragingly titled with affirmations such as “You are worth the time,” “Your work is worthy” and “You are not alone.” These could serve as repeated affirmation statements for artists still suffering from commitment-phobia to their soul dreams.
Besides lots of written encouragement and action-based exercises, Phillips also portrays the experiences and work of talented artists in the third section of “Marry Your Muse.” This helps broaden the scope of the book by showing that it’s not just Phillips who was able to dedicate her life to the truest love of all — her inner artist.
