Making Art In The Middle of Madness: A Guide for Waking Up from Your Fear-Trance So You Can Create Like the World Needs You To . . . Because It Does

Are you feeling stuck in your attempts to make art or perform in these times of pandemic, environmental and political madness? Does it seem like your life is on pause as you grieve a way of life that no longer exists and you're scrambling to find a path forward? I get it. This time sucks for you. . . but believe it or not, your work is more important than ever. Performance Coach and Certified Hypnotherapist, Holly Shaw, who has mentored hundreds of artists and shared her work with thousands through her Amazon bestselling book, The Creative Formula, delivers groundbreaking and original insights into your fear, your shadows, and what makes you, as an artist and performer, a brilliant agent of change. In this book, you'll learn how to: Create a partnership with your fear and your shadow selves - the Outlaw, the Rebel, and the Fabulist - so they become an asset to your creativity instead of a detriment or a distraction. Re-direct your energy into creating, connecting with your audience, and becoming a powerful agent of change. Connect with your audience and create in the virtual world so you can finally show up fully to perform the work you're here on this planet to do, whether you're connecting to one single person or a million. Avoid the mistakes that keep even famous people feeling too frozen and small to face the world. Use what you already know as an artist - about tension, vulnerability, creativity - to take on the unique challenges of our time and make art now. Discover the real meaning of stage fright and its uncanny parallel to trance states - and learn how that relates to your power as a performer, creative and artist. This book is a call to all artists, performers, speakers, and limelight seekers to wake up and chart a path forward not by running from or suppressing fear, but by learning to work with it to create something new. In a clear effective way, this book will uncover the systems that are running you, how they operate, and how you can dislodge yourself from the fear-trance in order to start using your energy to be a powerful force on stage, in your content and online. What Readers Are Already Saying About this Book: "A vital reminder and re-envisioning. . . a beautiful, witty and relevant message for us right now." - Dan Cantrell, Emmy award-winning composer, accordion wizard and grower of high quality beards "Holly's voice is clear and smart. This guide will change your life if you let it." - Amy Estes, comedian, humorist, writer (Huffington Post) "With both elegance and casual frankness, Holly takes the reader-artist by the hand and shows us how to use our usual human cocktail of responses to what scares us -- fight, flight + freeze -- to nourish our art-making, rather than shunt it." - Kellita Maloof, Conscious Burlesque Mentor and Author of How To Create A Burlesque Solo ... From The Inside Out "If you're a creative in the era of COVID, this book is your vaccine and your survival guide." - Ron Roecker, award-winning author and entertainment PR strategist to celebrities and artists, from indies to icons Holly Shaw is a performance coach, creativity researcher and hypnotherapist whose first book, The Creative Formula, became an Amazon bestseller shortly after it was published in 2016. She has spent a lifetime on stage, television and film as an actor, dancer, and now stand-up comedian and over the years over the years has facilitated and directed many workshops and productions including teaching at the SAG/AFTRA conservatory in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her podcast, Performers and CreatorsLab, was named One of The Most Outstanding Podcasts of 2019 by Databird Research. Through all of her offerings Shaw has helped thousands of creatives, some of them Grammy nominated and Emmy Award winning artists, Hollywood actors, and internationally renowned dancers, in order to help them overcome stage fright, anxiety, and blocks so that they can create the work they were born to make and become undeniably magnetic performers without feeling like they're selling out or losing their sanity.Currently, she produces a live, COVID compliant comedy show, The Comedy Edge, in Oakland, California where she lives with her teenage son.