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the-creative-act-cover.jpg

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

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Hardcover:

The Creative Act isn’t a book about making music — it’s a book about paying attention. Rick Rubin, the producer behind Johnny Cash, Adele, and the Beastie Boys, argues that creativity isn’t a talent a lucky few are born with, but a way of being available to the world.

A #1 New York Times bestseller that The Wall Street Journal called “a work of transcendent literature.” Anne Lamott calls it “a gorgeous and inspiring work of art,” and Seth Godin predicts you’ll read it four times.

Over four decades and nine Grammy wins, Rick Rubin has coaxed extraordinary work out of artists as different as Johnny Cash, Jay-Z, Slayer, and Adele. He is not a musician, and that turns out to be the point.

The Creative Act distills what he learned in the studio into seventy-eight short chapters he calls areas of thought. Each runs a page or two — less a lesson than a nudge toward a different way of paying attention.

Rubin’s premise is that creativity is not a rare gift handed to a chosen few. It is the natural result of staying tuned to the world, and anyone can practice it.

The book follows the whole arc of making something: collecting the seeds, experimenting freely, committing to a direction, and finally letting the work go. Along the way it dismantles the myths of the tortured genius and the flawless finished piece.

It is built to be read out of order and returned to often. Writers, designers, founders, and anyone stuck in a rut have found it works less like a manual than like a friend who believes in you.

The Creative Act isn’t a book about making music — it’s a book about paying attention. Rick Rubin, the producer behind Johnny Cash, Adele, and the Beastie Boys, argues that creativity isn’t a talent a lucky few are born with, but a way of being available to the world.

A #1 New York Times bestseller that The Wall Street Journal called “a work of transcendent literature.” Anne Lamott calls it “a gorgeous and inspiring work of art,” and Seth Godin predicts you’ll read it four times.

Over four decades and nine Grammy wins, Rick Rubin has coaxed extraordinary work out of artists as different as Johnny Cash, Jay-Z, Slayer, and Adele. He is not a musician, and that turns out to be the point.

The Creative Act distills what he learned in the studio into seventy-eight short chapters he calls areas of thought. Each runs a page or two — less a lesson than a nudge toward a different way of paying attention.

Rubin’s premise is that creativity is not a rare gift handed to a chosen few. It is the natural result of staying tuned to the world, and anyone can practice it.

The book follows the whole arc of making something: collecting the seeds, experimenting freely, committing to a direction, and finally letting the work go. Along the way it dismantles the myths of the tortured genius and the flawless finished piece.

It is built to be read out of order and returned to often. Writers, designers, founders, and anyone stuck in a rut have found it works less like a manual than like a friend who believes in you.

  • Publisher: Penguin Press

    Title: The Creative Act: A Way of Being

    Author: Rick Rubin

    On Sale Date: January 17, 2023

    ISBN 13: 9780593652886

    ISBN 10: 0593652886

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $32.00

    BISAC: Self-Help / Creativity (+2)

    Page Count: 432

    Dimensions: 8.5 in H | 6 in W

  • Rick Rubin is a nine-time Grammy-winning producer and co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, named one of Time’s 100 most influential people and described by Rolling Stone as the most successful producer working in any genre. Over four decades he has shaped landmark records for Johnny Cash, Adele, the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slayer, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and System of a Down, and he co-hosts the podcast Tetragrammaton. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, his first book, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

  • Readers are calling it meditative, disarming, and quietly radical.

    • The Wall Street Journal calls it “a work of transcendent literature.”

    • The Atlantic notes that the book is “not just for musicians,” offering a clear vision of the stages of creativity.

    • Anne Lamott describes it as “a gorgeous and inspiring work of art.”

    • Seth Godin predicts you will read it four times — and by the fourth, it will be part of you.

This book is for you if

  • You have a creative project you keep not starting, and you suspect the obstacle is in your head rather than your calendar.

  • You work in a field nobody calls artistic — business, teaching, engineering — and you want to bring more originality to it.

  • You loved Bird by Bird, The War of Art, or Big Magic and want the next book for that shelf.

  • You prefer short, aphoristic chapters you can open at random over a step-by-step system.

  • You are curious how the producer behind Johnny Cash’s Hurt and the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill actually thinks.

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