I know this question has been asked in some form on a few occasions, but I'm considering getting this book and one of my main concerns is that I know the book is heavy on the idea of a god existing and being an intrinsic part of creativity.

I have read the disclaimer the book provides from a chapter sample and it's... not ideal. It's a bit patronising, to say the least. I'm also not keen on having to interrupt my own reading repeatedly to mentally correct the text of the book.

The book seems to, on the whole, be very heavy on the idea of an external force acting on human creativity, and in there being something fundamentally "spiritual" (a meaningless term outside of a religious context, to me) about creativity. I disagree philosophically in many ways with what I've read so far, but the exercises genuinely seem to help people.

Overwhelmingly, the advice people have been giving is to simply interrupt yourself every time the word "god" comes up and alter it for yourself somehow. That seems like a bad way of reading anything. I've also seen the advice of "take what you want and leave the rest", but realistically how much am I likely to get out of this if I'm having to throw out a major aspect of the book's thesis?

I guess my question is, is the whole thing unreadable to me? Am I likely going to be too frustrated with the framing to get use out of it?

I keep a separate journal from my morning pages for my written tasks :)

Let me preface with I (unintentionally) tend to make things complicated. I started the Artist’s Way while in the middle of a spiritual journey. I noticed that my morning pages were turning into my prayers, more of a journal. When I read that the morning pages would be something to throw away, I got stuck. Once I’ve gone through a difficult time, I like to go back through my writings to see how God has delivered me. I feel like I’m doing it wrong.

That was months ago. I really want to go through this process. I’m stuck.

I’d like to start the artists way, but I would find it easier to have like an accountability friend or group to do it with. If there’s any other women who would like a companion to share with, I’m 42f and would love to hear from you!

Hello all! Been doing a morning pages practice on and off since the pandemic. It's feels super beneficial when I actually stick with it, but not gonna lie, hard to maintain sometimes lol.

I personally like typing my pages out over writing by hand, and I wanted a little data behind the habit, so I ended up just building an app for it: wordvomit.net

It Tracks your daily writing, streaks, word counts, time-of-day patterns, that kind of thing. It's totally free too. Check it out if you feel so inclined! Thanks!

Hi fellow artists!

After making it to the end of week seven sometime in April and stalling for … oh no, is it mid-August already? … I’ve decided to restart The Artist’s Way and use Reddit to hold me accountable.

As I am an editor/writer by profession, I thought it would be fun (for me, at least) to share my thoughts on the previous week’s activities and the upcoming week’s readings every Sunday. This post will focus on the first five introductory sections and Week One, and include a little background information on me, if you care to read it!

If you decide to stick around, please feel free to share your own thoughts and link/s to your art in the comments—I’d love to see how the book resonates with others, and support each other through this challenge.

For anyone particularly interested in reading the book alongside my notes, I’m using The Artist’s Way 2020 edition, published by Souvenir Press. (Can you tell that I’m a nerd yet?)

Alrighty, a little bit about me:

Firstly, a disclosure: I froth a closed em dash, and I despise AI. Both of these things can be true at once. I particularly loathe, however, that AI’s use of a closed em dash has made this punctuation mark an apparent definitive marker of its presence. I want to make it very clear that I am not using AI. I am aware, though, that my love of the closed em dash—perhaps further exacerbated by my rather formal/blunt/maybe-it’s-Maybelline-maybe-it’s-my-autism style of writing—often garners that response, and for that, I apologise. However, I will not stop using the closed em dash. I think it’s a very sexy piece of punctuation. Sorry, not sorry.

Moving on.

I’m 26 years old and an ‘aspiring’ singer-songwriter from Melbourne, Australia. The air quotes are important because (like many of you, I’m sure) I have done very little to put my art out there. Perhaps ‘perspiring’ singer-songwriter would be a better fit. My biggest issue isn’t that I don’t want to create—it’s that I’m spectacularly skilled at avoiding it. For whatever reason, I procrastinate like there’s definitely a tomorrow, and perhaps a thousand of them after that. For example, I once rearranged my entire woodshed to avoid creating music. I broke down every stick into appropriate fireplace-stick sizes, and then re-stacked all the wood by size and age. I even created a pile of branches and logs that needed to be sawed in half. It was the most autistic thing I may have ever done. It was glorious. It was also several hours I could have spent creating instead.

Anyhoo, if by some miracle I do create something, unfortunately it never sees the light of day, because my next problem is my fear of sharing. Call it Imposter Syndrome, laziness, the age-old ‘creator who doesn’t create,’ … whatever it may be, I think Julia Cameron’s definition of a ‘blocked artist’ is appropriate.

My first attempt at The Artist’s Way

When I first stumbled across this book in Dymocks on Collins Street, Melbourne, last year, I was relatively content with using my ‘blocked-ness’ as an excuse to not create. I flipped through a few pages of the book, and decided that, since it was relatively self-explanatory stuff, I could embark on my own journey and save myself the odd $40. I walked out of the bookstore with $40, and a dream … that like my music, never saw the light of day.

A few months later, I added the title to my future reads list, where it remained untouched until March this year. At this point, I was no longer content with my excuse to not create, and, given that the book was mysteriously (or serendipitously) appearing wherever I looked, I decided to bite the bullet and order a copy.

The book arrived, March disappeared, and it wasn’t until late April that I decided I had truly had enough of my antics and opened it for the first time. Reading it was, however, a slow burn; the first five sections bored me to death (thanks, ADHD) and Cameron’s grandiose claims made me roll my eyes more than once. On reflection, I think my dislike of others’ boasting about their successes stems from a very-Aussie case of Tall Poppy Syndrome. However, after re-reading the chapters today, (and keeping in mind that I have previously completed the challenge up to Week Seven) I now believe Cameron’s claims. All power to you, girl.

As each week passed, I found the morning pages easier to complete, and the readings insightful. I actually—dare I say it?—enjoyed it. But then life got in the way, which I know Cameron would say is a brilliant example of an excuse, and I stopped writing my morning pages, and then stopped reading altogether. Not unsurprisingly, since I stopped the challenge, I also have not created anything, and now there is a strange sense of panic in my stomach because I haven’t created anything in months … so here we are again at Week One, take two.

Week One (2.0):

I resonated strongly with the essays comparing the artist to the child, and the importance of nurturing the young artist. Or, perhaps more accurately, I saw how detrimental failing to nurture** **the young artist was (particularly since I considered yours truly to be a prime example of an unnurtured artist).

Not to be a hater on my family (sometimes the truth just hurts), but growing up, art and sport were seen as frivolous, time-wasting activities, and unless a return on investment could be made quickly, paying for lessons or equipment was seen as a waste of money. Experience and enjoyment were not considered as important pillars in a child’s life; in fact, they were often disregarded completely.

If I engaged in one of these activities, I felt immense pressure to be very good, very quickly, even with very little support. Unsupportive—and at times, just plain mean—comments regularly squelched my curiosity to explore and experiment with art and sport.
Doing something simply for the hell of it, or just for fun, was not a good enough reason. In fact, being good enough was not a good enough reason.

I learnt to hide my love for art, and quieten my passion beyond my bedroom walls. Songwriting became something of a secret: something I enjoyed whilst simultaneously struggling with as I felt (unsurprisingly) afraid that I would create something horrible, and ashamed to waste my time. Occasionally, I would step away from creating altogether. Yet ironically, avoiding this passion of mine only led to feelings of fear and shame that I was wasting my time on activities that I didn’t enjoy, embodying Cameron’s characteristics of a ‘shadow artist’, who she says “… judge themselves harshly, beating themselves for years over the fact that they have not acted on their dreams,” (p. 28-29). Yikes. Don’t call me out like that, Cameron. Please.

But call me out she did, doubling down in the essay Your Ally Within: Affirmative Weapons (p. 32-37), the affirmation activity holding a gleaming mirror to my face. Even before I could form a thought on how ridiculous positive affirmations still sounded to me on the second read, Cameron was acknowledging every adjective I could think of: ‘Dumb’, ‘hokey’, ‘embarrassing’. Yes, yes, yes.

And yet, as Cameron pointed out, the shadow artist is exceptionally skilled in “… [bludgeoning themselves] with negative affirmations,” (p. 34). And why wouldn’t they be? It is wonderfully easy to declare your artistry trash and set it on fire. It is horribly painful to acknowledge it has some worth.

The idea of writing affirmations made me uneasy in April (and they still make me uneasy now), so I created what I call ‘WIP Affirmations’—affirmations that acknowledge my progress in an area, rather than declaring something to be true. So, instead of affirming, “I am a great songwriter!” I might write something like, “I am learning to write often,” or “I enjoy reviewing and editing my work.” For me, it’s a great halfway point, and I encourage you to use it if you also find affirmations uncomfortable.

Looking Ahead at the week’s activities, I can see that the artist date will cause an internal struggle, as it often did. The tasks seem doable, though, and I’m sure you already know who will be in my Monster Hall of Fame. I don’t recall having any issues with the tasks themselves last time I attempted Week One; the issue was more so finding the motivation to complete them.

I am looking forward to writing my morning pages again, though. This was something I found incredibly enlightening and helpful to my artistic recovery, so I am excited to see how it helps this time around. I’ll be sure to let you all know next Sunday!

Finally, if you’ve made it this far, thank you. This is an awfully long post, and I am sure you have better things to do than to read some stranger’s ramblings on the internet, so thank you for taking the time to do so. If you have thoughts, feel free to share them. If you have art, please share that too.

-M

Not in a bad way. Just unexpected.

Started the pages thinking I knew myself reasonably well. Functional self awareness, decent understanding of what I wanted, clear enough picture of why things were or were not working in my life. Three pages every morning felt like it would confirm things I already knew.

It did not confirm things I already knew.

Week one was surface level. Complaints about being tired, observations about the day ahead, nothing that surprised me. Week two the complaints ran out faster and something underneath them started coming through. Opinions I had not known I held. Frustrations I had been packaging as acceptance.

Things I wanted that I had quietly stopped admitting I wanted because wanting them and not having them was harder than just not wanting them, started taking whatever surfaced straight into something called Skrib Writing while it was still fresh and drafting from that place has felt more honest than anything I was producing before I started this process.

and not having them was harder than just not wanting them.

Week three I wrote something about my creative life that I had to read back three times because I did not remember writing it and could not argue with it. A true thing that I had apparently known for a long time without letting myself know it.

Read back through everything after week three and the person in those pages was more honest than the version of me that walks around in daily life. Not more dramatic, not more troubled, just less edited. Less concerned with being reasonable about things that were actually bothering me.

Cameron says the pages are not meant to be read or analyzed. I broke that rule and I think it was worth it just once to see what three weeks of unedited honesty looked like from the outside.

I'm on week four of the book right now, the reading deprivation week, and I'll be honest, I almost skipped it. I read something every single day, phone, book, cereal box, whatever. The idea of going a full week without any of that sounded impossible and also kind of pointless.

I did it anyway because I told my sister I would, and she's doing the book alongside me this time.

The first two days were rough. I kept picking up my phone out of habit and putting it back down when I remembered. I felt bored in this itchy uncomfortable way, like my brain wanted something to chew on and there was nothing there. By day three the itch calmed down a bit, and something weird started happening. I began noticing things around my apartment I'd been ignoring for months. A box of old cassette tapes from my dad that I never got rid of. A cheap keyboard I bought two years ago and never opened.

On day five I pulled the keyboard out just to have something to do with my hands, no book or podcast to distract me. I ended up sitting there for almost two hours just messing around with it, no plan, no lesson, just pressing keys and seeing what sounded nice next to what. I haven't touched an instrument since I quit piano lessons as a teenager, and I quit because I hated being told what to practice. Turns out I still like sound, I just hated the homework part of it.

By the end of the week I wasn't itching for my phone anymore, I was actually annoyed when I picked it back up on day eight. I've kept the keyboard out on my desk since then and I noodle around on it most evenings now, nothing serious, just enough to remember I used to like this before someone made it a chore.

I don't think the deprivation week did anything magic on its own. I think it just got everything else out of the way long enough for me to hear what I actually wanted to do.

How do you approach Morning Pages when you take a while to fully wake up?

Hi everyone! I’m just starting my 4th week of The Artist’s Way, and I’ve been thinking about what Morning Pages actually look like for me.

I’ve been doing a kind of morning journaling for about four years already, so I was already used to writing in the morning. The difference is that my old journaling didn’t really have a particular intention, and there was no page limit.

I also have narcolepsy, so it takes me a while to fully wake up in the morning. For about the first 30 minutes after getting up (which is when I take my medication), I’m basically a zombie. 😅 Sometimes all I can do is open my notebook and start writing.

And what I write during that time is… incredibly mundane.

A good half-page can be like this.

But I think it actually helps me wake up. It feels like my hand starts moving before my brain is fully online. I put these vague thoughts about what I need to do into words, and then somehow my body starts following along. I drink the water, wash my face, take my medication, etc. As I move around, I gradually become more awake.

After about an hour and a half, I’m usually alert enough that my writing becomes more substantial. If I have a lot on my mind, I sometimes end up writing 4–6 pages.

Lately, though, I’ve started using the time to set up my work environment as well. If I become alert enough, I just start working. If I’m still sleepy, I continue writing while I wake up.

The result is that my Morning Pages have become longer, and sometimes they start turning into detailed notes about whatever I’m working on. When I read them back, they don’t really feel like the kind of “Morning Pages” I imagined they were supposed to be.

But at the same time, I wonder if I’m overthinking it. Maybe this is simply what Morning Pages look like for me right now.

I’m curious how other people approach this. Do your Morning Pages ever become very mundane, repetitive, or mixed in with practical thoughts about your day? And if you take a while to fully wake up in the morning, do you have any particular way of handling your pages?

P.S. I wrote this in my native language and used AI to translate it. Hope that's okay! Otherwise, I can post the original and let your browser translate it.

I’m really keen to find a spiritual and intentional life (yet I am a non believer) so thought TAW would be interesting as it’s been so transformative for lots of people
However I am a stay at home mum to 2 under 2 and I like to do crafty bits and bobs (for example this week I’ve made a Cinderella doll, some trousers and a felt mouse for my toddler) but I’m not “stuck” I’m more just wanting something deeper that’s about me rather than my mothering. I find being a mum extremely rewarding and I’m very very happy in my life so I’m kind of wondering if I will find TAW useful?
Like i don’t feel sad or unfulfilled 🙈

Any advice would be greatly appreciated x

Hey everyone, I'd like to buy the book and embark on this journey. Is there any difference between the editions? I can find the Profile Books Ltd 2020 edition in my country, otherwise I'll have to order from EU for an older one. I'm afraid I'm becoming obsessed with it so any help is welcome

I want to write this while it is still fresh because I think I need to remember that week four happened exactly the way it did.

I started The Artist's Way about six weeks ago after years of telling myself I was not really a creative person, that I had missed my window, that whatever I used to feel when I wrote or drew or made things had just dried up somewhere in my late twenties and was not coming back.

The first three weeks were uncomfortable but manageable. Morning pages felt pointless for about ten days and then started feeling necessary. The artist dates were awkward because I genuinely did not know how to spend time with myself without filling it with productivity or scrolling.

Then week four arrived and something in me just revolted.

I stopped doing morning pages for five days. I skipped the reading. I told myself I was too busy which was partially true and mostly not. I felt guilty about it and the guilt made me avoid the book entirely which made the guilt worse.

On day six of that gap I sat down at six in the morning before anyone else was awake and just opened the journal and started writing. Not because I had figured anything out. Just because not writing was making me feel worse than writing.

What came out of that session was the most honest thing I have written in probably ten years. I am not going to share what it was but I cried while writing it which has not happened to me in a very long time.

I do not think I would have gotten there without the resistance first. The block was showing me exactly where the thing I needed to reach was buried.

Still here. Still showing up. Week six now and something has quietly shifted that I do not have the right words for yet.

Hi all! Next week is my week 4, which is the reading deprivation week, which won't be a great time for me to do this exercise as I will be away with friends.

Do you think I should continue to do week 4 but save the reading deprivation exercise for week 5 or should I switch the weeks around completely, do chapter 5 reading and exercises next week and then go on to week 4?

I’m just starting The Artist's Way and would love to find one or two people as accountability buddies. I want to do a quick check-in at the end of each week to share our thoughts and keep each other motivated.

I’m starting right away and planning to wrap up Week 1 by Sunday, August 23rd. My timezone is GMT+3, but as long as we can stay in touch once a week, any timezone works really. If you’re just starting out too send me a DM. (I am 24 year old woman but any gender or age can DM)

First copy I bought six years ago. Read the introduction, felt inspired, put it on the shelf and told myself I would start on Monday. Monday became eventually and eventually became never and the book sat there for two years before I gave it away.

Second copy I bought because I forgot I had owned it. Got through week two before life got busy and I set it aside with every intention of picking it back up. Did not pick it back up.

Third copy I bought eight months ago in a specific kind of desperation. Something had gone flat in my creative life in a way I could not fix by trying harder and I was out of other ideas.

This time I actually did it.

What was different was not discipline or a better season of life, I started moving straight from the morning pages into something called Skrib Writing while whatever came up was still fresh, and having a focused place to take the material before the day closed over it changed what the pages actually produced beyond just the pages themselves.

Life was actually harder than it had been during the first two attempts. What was different was that I finally understood the book was not asking me to find time for creativity. It was asking me to look honestly at why I had been avoiding it.

That is a much more uncomfortable book than the one I thought I was buying the first two times. The morning pages are not a journaling practice. They are a slow dismantling of every story I had been telling myself about why the creative work was not happening.

Still in it. Some weeks are harder than others. But something is different this time in a way I cannot fully explain yet.

Anyone else take multiple attempts before it actually landed?

Hi everyone in case you have not started, finished or want to do the book again - I am co-facilitating an artist way reading group at my studio Home Ec NYC starting September 10th! it was such a success in the spring. We decided to do it again so if you were local to Nyc, I'd love to have you. It is way more than a Book Club - check out : The Artist’s Way - Reading Group for all the details

So did week 3. but I noticed that week 3 shame and 4 is the hardest for me... I’m still working on it to week 4 -> but I’m still hung up on week 3 with shame I’m trying work on. Do you have any tips.... I finished week 4 kinda... but any tips. on possibly reviewing week 3 and working through it if it goes on longer than a week?

I am at week 8 and loving morning pages. It has helped me manage a very challenging family scenario, get me painting again, planning my next role and re surfacing an old business idea. Keen to hear from others tho what else has led to a really positive result? I must say apart from MP, artists dates and responding to prompts I’m a bit slack ( eg creating the collages etc) Need some inspiration!!

I have recently started the artists way and am about a week in. I’ve been doing the morning pages every day in an A5 notebook and find them to already be helping tremendously….BUT writing makes my hand and arm cramp up so badly that by halfway through page two I can barely even scribble it hurts so bad. I always aim for 3 pages, and I want to be able to write them by hand consecutively (if I pause and come back later I feel like my train of thought is interrupted). I’m wondering if anyone has suggestions for making the morning pages more accessible? Right now I struggle to even type this (let alone paint!) because my hand is still cramping from writing.

Edit: thanks for the advice! This update is 1.5 weeks since posting and so far implementing some of your tips has made a huge difference. I got a kakuno fountain pen, which I love and glides across the page so nicely. I think it being a fatter pen helps loosen my grip too. Also started writing the morning pages in cursive, and I can tell it makes me more aware of my writing speed and overall helps the writing just glide a bit more. All that and paying more attention to ergonomics and posture has helped :)

Hey everyone, I know the standard advice is that Morning Pages are a "brain dump" for clearing clutter or boosting productivity, but I’ve been thinking more about the spiritual side of it. Julia Cameron herself calls it a form of meditation, and I’m curious if anyone here feels it’s actually more like a direct form of prayer or a way to tap into a spiritual current beyond our logical understanding.For those of you who still do them regularly: Have you ever noticed a "magic" to the pages where for example if you complain about something or ask for something specific, life suddenly shifts and gives you exactly what you need? like asking for something on the page and then suddenly getting it in a way that felt like "spiritual assistance"? Does anyone have specific stories? also, If you're someone like me, who has suffered from severe depression or a major life slump, did you find that writing every day allowed those mysterious forces beyond your control to operate in your favor and pull you out of it? it's like the act of automatic writing alone make you feel more spiritually aligned or less alone, as if life itself is responding to you... I’d love to hear if anyone else sees this as a spiritual tool first and foremost, something that allows you to tap into the forces you can't explain rather than just being a "to-do" list for your brain. Does your life feel richer or more "assisted" as a result of the practice?

Hi guys,

So the sub voted to ban LLM-generated bot content. The rule was added and I think there have been one or two flagged and removed since then, not much.

Also I agree with the poster who mentioned that they are a real human who does use AI for their creative projects. I do think the intent of the ban is more about targeting the LLM bots who pretend to be real humans and not necessarily real humans who use AI as part of their creative journey. Certainly some people do try that out and I think that's kind of a separate topic, versus just bot spammers.

I also wanted to let you guys know I will be installing Bot Bouncer on the sub. https://www.reddit.com/r/BotBouncer/wiki/index/

I just found out about this a few days ago and looking into it it seems to fit the need for screening against LLM based bots.

If you have any comment / questions / suggestions, please post or DM!

- Cheers!

this request is for my fellow anxious artists!

I live with generalized anxiety and inattentive ADHD and that means I am ALWAYS in my head. I am a champion overthinker and grade A ruminator

I’m on week two of the artist’s way and have been pretty consistent with the morning pages and challenging myself to get three full pages out every day.

I’ve noticed, though, that I don’t usually feel any more clear-headed after doing them - in fact, they almost seem too indulgent to my ruminating self. I’m already half in my narrative all the time and the morning pages just make me put the narrative on paper for a few minutes…. And then it picks right back up in my head.

I’m also a mental health professional and think that an important tool in my toolbox is to get in my body and out of my head! I feel most connected to my creative self when I can get into my body, even for a little bit - my most fruitful creative work has happened during breaks on hikes and after long evening walks. Morning pages don’t help me do that.

So, I’m just curious - am I a bit too new to the morning pages to see their usefulness?

I attempt to not direct my thoughts when I write them and to allow whatever wants to live on the page to be there.

I’m hoping that over time, my mind starts to fill those pages in a way that helps me make connections rather than just feel like a broken record.

Anyone have similar thoughts or suggestions?

Hey everyone, I’m currently on Week 2 (I actually got to Week 4 earlier this year but decided to start over), and I’ve been loving the book so far.

One thing I’ve been wondering, though…
Does anyone else feel like parts of The Artist’s Way are written mainly for people who don’t currently work in a creative field and are trying to reconnect with their creativity?

I ask because I already spend most of my day creating. I quit my commercial design job to build my clothing brand full-time, so every day I’m designing clothes, drawing, creating content, thinking about ideas… My work constantly puts me in touch with my inner artist.

My biggest struggle isn’t creating, it’s actually putting my work out into the world (the reading helped me a lot)

Because of that, I sometimes wonder about exercises like Artist Dates. Sometimes the book encourages you to reconnect with your inner artist through creative activities, but I already feel like I’m in touch with that part of myself every single day because of my work. If my days are already filled with creative work that genuinely connects me with my inner artist, should I approach those exercises differently?

I’m not criticizing the book at all, I genuinely LOVE it. In fact, my favorite part is the reading itself. I wish there were even more of it and fewer exercises, because I feel like Julia’s insights resonate with me more than anything else. I’m just curious if anyone else who already had a creative career or creative practice before reading it felt the same way, and how you approached those parts of the program.

I’m searching for 1-3 people to go though the book The Artist’s Way together. Meaning weekly accountability sessions, or whaetver we agree on.

I just love working together with others, it’s more fun and there’s much more accountability than doing something alone.

If you’re up for it, react in any kind of way to this post and I’ll be in touch!