The Artist's Way : A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

I know how to do that already, that was part of the problem. I found myself getting bogged down creatively, to be honest; doing the exercises, thinking and talking to friends about this wonderful process that was going to change my life radically, rather than spending my time drawing, etc.

What I have come to believe is that art is in the doing, and not in the preparation to do. If I want to be a visual artist, I should draw and study art. If I want to write, I should write a lot and read many books. If I want to be a good musician, I should practice my instrument and listen to good music.

And if I don't want to, then I don't have to either. It just turns out that I am not a happy person if I am not creatively engaged in some pursuit.

And understand that the real reason to do that is for the love of the doing of it. I really don't think I have that many creative enemies that are out to keep me from reaching my true creative potiential. If I did, I feel confident that I could still sneak away from them and do my own creative work on my own time, in spite of them if I want to. This is the gift of having free will.

This all having been said, it this book may still be helpful for some people. I may come back to it someday, and give it another try, but for now I am using that time to play my guitar.


Save a Tree: Avoid this Book   April 7, 2003
Richard J. Berman (Oakland, CA USA)
60 out of 88 found this review helpful

This book came highly recommended by an old friend. I still haven't forgiven him.

In brief: The Artist's Way promotes itself as a "spiritual path to higher creativity." The reality is far more mundane, as it mires down in tepid cliches, pointless affirmations and barely relevant inspirational quotes from obscure Asian mystics. The book follows a 12-week program designed to help writers, actors, artists and musicians get past their creative blocks and become productive creators.

Once the cover is opened, however, I found a list of mind-numbing activities such as writing nasty letters to my third-grade art teacher who told me that I wasn't going to be the next Gauguin. And I felt like Richard Nixon when asked to prepare a list of all of the people who had wronged me as a child.

Julia Cameron believes that by acknowledging and confronting one's "creative enemies" one can become a successful and fulfilled artist, and the dominant theme of her book is spiritual "recovery." But the author is consumed by her own traumas and latent alcoholism, and seems to have written the book as a form of personal therapy. Good for her, but I'm not sure why The Artist's Way has become the EST of the new century.

My suspicion is that it's a lot easier to make excuses than to create good art. Most of us have dozens of reasons why we can't be the next Picasso, Polanski or Pagannini, but in the end it all boils down to talent and hard work. The Artist's Way, although it purports to be a pathway to "recovering your creative self," is little more than a bundle of new-age aphorisms cloaked in the formality of an Alcoholics Anonymous program.


It inspired me to write this...   March 2, 2005
Jessica Melusine (Washington, DC)
58 out of 93 found this review helpful

Firstly, I like it when people want to get creative, get down with the parts of themselves that they haven't done that, paint, write, do the things they want to and I truly wish this book would help would help rather than hinder that process.

To vent my spleen first...Ms. Cameron's work is like being forcefed a nasogastric tube of industrial grade saccharine. To be blunt, I liked The Artist's Way better when it was Creative Visualization. I am familiar with self-help books remixing and recombining new ideas, but a lot of The Artist's Way seems entirely too much like Creative Visualization; I also feel that what Ms. Cameron adds can be detrimental rather than helpful.

Ms. Cameron's few reasonable ideas get caught up in reams of exercises that don't seem to lead to much in the way of artistic development and had me thinking " Well, I could write a story in the time it would take me to do Morning Pages and have a date with my inner artist child".
Throughout The Artist's Way, it seems that the only art being produced is cure-centric and it seems like Ms. Cameron has cornered the market on this particular malady. There are a few decent ideas--taking time for oneself is one, as is journaling--but the context, I think, saps them of any real usefulness.
Likewise, Ms. Cameron namedrops about the films she had produced, her plays and her former relationship with Scorsese, which strikes me as questionable at best; there is little said about her current efforts, which may be telling since it seems like The Artist's Way is it. At any rate, it does give me enough pause to mention it.
Plus, the suggestion of a week without reading or media struck me as really privileging one form of creative output over another; some artists thrive on the interplay of texts, the mixup between them and what happens when they collide and it rubbed me the wrong way. I also found her discussion of art and sexuality to be at the best, questionable (ie, her revelation that artists don't need to be promiscuous (or substance users )and that female artists don't need to be gay strikes me as tacky and yet another weird form of privilege that seems to lie under much of the text.

This book may help some people, but a lot of her approach really left me cold. For all of her insistence that there are many ways to be creative, there seems to be only one way--and that's hers.
(Likewise, something about Ms. Cameron's book really screams"Take the class and buy the notebooks too!")

Overall, I'm certain this book has helped some people, but it seems like it can leave a lot to be desired--the sexuality issue is a hot one for me, as is the unspoken praise of a particular kind of art. Still, journalling and meditating are good in whatever form you get them and I'm glad that this book has helped some people-- I just wish there wasn't all this weirdness to wade through to get there.

I'm guessing the audience for this book is more of a suburban one that does need a wakeup call for a happier and/or more creative life. Good for them for wanting a wakeup call and working towards it and I do hope this book gets them some joy; however, I think that the cure may be worse than the disease in Cameron's work.



An intensive self-examination course   May 19, 2003
Nosferatu (Albuquerque, NM United States)
54 out of 56 found this review helpful

This 229-page book is actually a course to free your creativity. The entire course is based upon the principle that the artist must have faith to be creative. It is the author's conviction that the Creator encourages creativity in all people.

The book is broken down into twelve weekly lessons. There are several miscellaneous sections. Each weekly lesson has tasks and exercises to be completed. Sidebars provide quotes and tidbits of information to uplift the soul. The divisions of the manual are as follow:

In the introduction, the author explains how she began teaching and eventually developed her seminars and lectures into a book.

Spiritual Electricity: The Basic Principles defines the ten spiritual principles, gives directions for using this course, and tells the reader what to expect from the course.

The Basic Tools introduces the two primary tools of the course: the morning pages and the artist date. The morning pages are three handwritten pages, penned in stream-of-consciousness, without looking back at the previous pages. The artist date is time set aside to be spent with your inner artist. There is even a creativity contract.

Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety deals with realizing what negative beliefs and hurts from the past are blocking or restricting your creativity and replacing them with positive affirmations.

Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity begins with a section called "Going Sane." It deals with the people you surround yourself with in life and how they exert negative influence over your creativity.

Week 3: Recovering a Sense of Power leaps right into anger management, shame, and dealing with criticism. It examines how most people are afraid that there is a God watching everything we do.

Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity is about learning to distinguish between the mask you wear for the public and your real inner feelings. There are exercises in learning what you really want from life and in sensory deprivation.

Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility begins with the following sentence: "One of the chief barriers to accepting God's generosity is our limited notion of what we are in fact able to accomplish." This lesson teaches us to break through those barriers.

Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance will have you tossing out clothing and gathering rocks. It teaches us that there is abundance in our lives and that our creativity requires its own portion of luxury.

Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection covers jealousy, perfectionism, risk, and learning to listen to our inner artist.

Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength teaches us to turn loss into gain by metabolizing the pain into energy. There is an exercise to help the artist break out of the early patterning; to overcome the negativity of childhood.

Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion deals with avoiding self-defeat and learning to logically deal with fears.

Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection enlightens us about the spiritual demons we create to battle our creativity: workaholism, fame, competition, and drought.

Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy focuses on how to handle success, how to nurture the inner artist, and the connection between nurturing the inner artist and self-respect.

Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith reminds us of the pitfalls to our creativity and helps us learn to have faith.

The book ends with sections on questions and answers, creativity clusters, and forming a sacred circle.

Every artist should own a copy of this book and utilize it religiously! It is the kind of manual that can be used over and over again for continual growth. I highly recommend it and feel it is a vital tool for personal creative expansion.


Read this book ... with caution   December 17, 2006
Reader
50 out of 60 found this review helpful

The practical advice in this book could help a person through an initial stage of getting out of the rut of low self-esteem, and the exercises Cameron gives are strictly structured, but fun. While it's unlikely that the book will be able to help a person to become an artist, it can certainly help a person to become more enthusiastic about life and, possibly, to find more of a sense of purpose and zest in life. Yes, this book could help a person to 'jump start' their dead battery.

So why do I give this two stars and a 'caution'? Here it is: over and over again, the author suggests that, when we follow a 'true' creative path, 'helping hands' tend to suddenly appear to guide us and 'synchronicity' tends to arrive on the scene to bring us serendipitous opportunities we never dreamed of or didn't expect. Well ... sorry folks, but life isn't always like that. Good, focused artistic people with a sense of purpose and drive can get crushed by illness, accidents, or lack of funding or support. Brutal and mean people without any spark of positive creative energy about them can make enormous strides and step on anyone in their way. I expect we have all, sadly, observed this in our lives -- we've all seen it happen. Sometimes, we have great luck in our lives, and sometimes we do not ... Sure, it's great when we are lucky, but I don't think it's wise to promote an idea that following this author's programme will increase the likelihood of good luck coming our way so that our lives will suddenly take off out of nowhere in a flurry of unexpected success and happiness. This is pretty naive -- and it's dangerous. By all means, we should live with joy and courage, and trust our creative intuition, but this needs to be grounded in reality and an understanding and acceptance of life in all its harshness and gentleness - the complete package, for all it is worth.

Another disturbing point: this book puts forward a kind of 'you shall know them by their fruits' attitude -- in other words, if someone is poor and unsuccessful, it is because they are just not being honest with themselves, not believing in themselves, or not having the guts to follow their star. The book suggests that if these unsuccessful people were being truly creative and following their true path, they would be receiving (sometimes out of nowhere, unexpectedly and mysteriously) all the help they need to reach their goal. This is nonsense. Compassion begins when we realise just how random life can be, how precious, and how ephemeral. Maybe knowing this is the beginning of a true artist's way.