The Creative & Multifaceted Book List

An essential collection of made-up titles

Oct 20, 2024

Welcome back to The Ecstatic Review! If you’re new, welcome to the conversation! We’re here to talk about communicating your big ideas, crafting your bold moves, and sharing your brilliantly multifaceted voice in the way that only you can.

In “What to say you do when you do it all,” I wrote:

If communication appears in career guides or business manuals at all, it’s usually stuck in a chapter near the end, with the kind of advice that makes you wonder if there’s some other book you should’ve read first.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that one of the reasons I developed a whole approach to talking about creative and multifaceted work is because I couldn’t find that book.

At this point, I feel like I could write it. I’d write a bunch of books, if I had the kind of lifestyle where I could live in the mountains and just type away all day. I’d love to fill a whole library with all of the books I wish I could’ve read when I was figuring out how to connect the dots of my own nonlinear path.

As a more realistic option for now, I thought I could at least outline a handful of ideas and write some titles to go with them. Because what’s a good book without a good title, anyway? Spoken like someone who names things for a living.

And so I present a few selections from the growing collection of The Ecstatic Voice Library of Communication for Creative, Dynamic, and Multifaceted People and Brands.

OK so the name is a little long. Let’s call it the EVLCCDMPB—nope. How about just the EVLC? Yeah! That would fit nicely on a library card.

Starting off strong with this one, which I have to tell you is a journey. I mean, just look at what the LA Review of Books has to say! You know you’ve made it as a book-reviewing place when you get the ARC before the book’s even written. Shoutout to the staff at the imaginary Ecstatic Voice imprint for setting that up.

Before you dig in, you should know that this epic novel is 5000 pages long and the length only increases the further along you get. As I’m describing it, I’m realizing it’s sounding a lot like that anxiety dream I keep having about packing for a trip. But stay with me!

When we first meet our heroine, it seems like she’s all over the place—she has a million jobs, she’s working across many disciplines, she’s earning her honorary PhD in Plate Spinning—then around Chapter 36, through a series of events that I won’t go into now, she realizes that she’s not scattered at all. She’s simply solving a highly complex (and actually quite specific) challenge from every angle. Just as she’s intuitively suspected all along.

I promise that’s not a spoiler. It’s actually impossible to spoil this book, because it’s a continually evolving, choose-your-own-adventure kind of thing, as all good journeys are.

Oh, had this book been on my shelf 10 years ago. I would have tattooed the title right on my wrist and looked down at it as I googled, “Is there something deeply wrong with me?” after yet another conversation about my work where someone gave me The Look.

You know the one: that stare that’s somehow completely blank yet pulsing with concern, that usually comes right after you’ve shared a big idea or a bold move out loud. We might as well call it a death stare, because it’s been the wrongful cause of death for far too many brilliant things.

I’d call this book a must-read for anyone who’s beginning to share their work, whether with an inner circle or more widely. Strange looks, polite no-thank-you’s, and uncomfortable laughter (Chapters 1, 5, and 8, respectively) are all perfectly common responses that let you know you’re doing something different and therefore exciting.

P.S. Thanks for the kind words, Simon, James, and Adam! Actually, are those words kind, or more like annoyed? Anyway, I’ll say to you now what I said out loud to myself while reading this recent tweet from Adam:

Welcome to the party, dudes.

This one isn’t an autobiography per se—but it’s not not autobiographical, if you know what I mean.

I remember the overwhelming sense of relief I felt when it finally hit me that my multifaceted capabilities are something to celebrate, not downplay. And then I remember thinking, “Well that’s great, but what do I do with it?”

And then: “How do I get other people to get it, too?”

I recently wrote about how exciting it is that there’s so much more cultural awareness around multifacetedness than there was even just a few years ago. But we’re still figuring out how to talk about it in a way that gets people to value our diverse capabilities while being more of who we are, not less.

That last sentence is really the whole reason why EV exists.

One of my favorite things I hear from the people and places I work with is that they make all of these discoveries and they know what to do with them. That’s 1000% intentional and something I obsessively work to make possible, because I want to see you celebrating your kaleidoscopic nature while speaking about it cohesively in a way that opens up even more for you.

Kirkus gets it.

I talk a lot about leading the conversation when it comes to your work, and one way to do that is to A. know when someone is asking you the wrong question for the kind of work you do, and B. answer a better question.

For example, I also recently wrote about how “So, what do you do?” really isn’t the right question to ask those of us who work on complex challenges in creative ways. Better questions would be: “What do you think about a lot?” or “What rabbit holes did you dive down recently?” or “What moves you?”

This book teaches you how to field questions like that one, and all of the others like it (you can watch me rattle off a bunch here), and answer better ones instead.

If that sounds like something you’d find useful, you might enjoy last year’s Small Talk Survival Guide. And keep sticking around: there’s a lot more where that came from on the way.

I don’t have to tell you what this one’s about—I wrote a three-part series of the same title right here at The Review. That series resonated with so many of you that I’ve decided to teach a super practical workshop in November called (you guessed it) the same thing. That’s right: This is a surprise workshop announcement!!!

We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes to get it ready, and if you couldn’t already tell from the triple exclamation points above: I’m so ecstatic to share it with you. Sign-ups open this week, so keep an eye out for an email with the details.

Alright, I’m off to write a bunch of books! So now I’ll throw it to you:

What books would you love to write?

Can’t wait to read them all,

A couple of announcements:

The Ecstatic Session is back with a longer session length and a streamlined process. It’s built to be a clarifying jumpstart to your next expression, and I’m such a fan that I’ve made it the sole offering for all new one-on-one clients. 6 spots are open in October. If it feels like a big yes, I’d love for one of them to be yours.
If you’re wanting some support from me and EV but not quite sure what that is, feel free to book a Friday Zoom chat! I’ve just opened these up, and they’ve been really lovely. Bring a snack, come as you are, and keep an eye out for Rosie, who might make a cameo.

Want to read some more? Try these: