The Artist’s Way
Whether or not you have heard of the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, you’ve probably heard of one of its most famous concepts: the morning pages. I was familiar with the morning pages, and have done them several times in my journaling practice. But I’d never used the book to do the complete 12 weeks course. So in March, I decided to try it.
I’ve just started Week 6, and it’s been an interesting journey so I wanted to share my thoughts which may be helpful if you are considering doing this course, or just feeling a creative block and in need of some inspiration.
First, let’s get the problems with this book out of the way.
The problems
This book was not meant for covid lockdown times. That made some aspects of exercises challenging. Not impossible, but certainly challenging. There are only so many activities you can do indoors for your artist date, especially when you spend the entire day working from home anyway.
Julia, having gone down the route of alcohol addiction then recovery through AA’s 12-step program found and clung to God. This shows up a lot in her writing. She advises, rightly, to not get bogged down in semantics and replace the word God with whatever you like. But I’ve got to admit, it is irritating at times. I’m not an atheist but I am also not a fan of preaching and religion in my books. I…
