There are some 2400 members of r/theartistsway on Reddit. The Artist’s Way, if you are not one of them, is a kind of self-help book written by Julia Cameron, subtitled “A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.”
The book lays out a 12 week program of exercises, each week with a different theme.
First, a little about me so that you might understand my perspective and how your experience with the book might differ.
I suspect I’m older than most readers of The Artists Way. I turned 64 while working through the 12 week program.
I’m a composer. “Aspiring composer” I would have said before reading the book. I’ve been active musically to varying degrees since before I was a teenager and I’m looking to deepen these activities in my later life.
My life experience includes full-time non-artistic work over four decades, including the time I worked through the book.
I have a rich family life including a very long term life partner with whom I’ve raised two children.
Oh, and I am lucky to have had a very nurturing childhood and adolescence. My parents gave me plenty of encouragement, support and opportunities to learn and grow. I was alone quite a bit of the time but, that just created a necessity to play with more imagination.
Back in high school, one of my music’s teachers, who was himself a Jazz musician, made a an observation about me that I’m now reminded of as I look at my …Artist’s Way experience. He was talking about different students and how they were either left brain or right brained, according to his kind of popular psychological model and his experiences with each student.. When he came to discuss my personality, he said something to the effect of, “You’re a tough one. You’re very logical so, that’s a left brain thing. But, at the same time, you have a creative, right-brained quality.”
Now that I’ve taken the journey, here are my thoughts on some of the exercises and ideas presented in The Artist’s Way.
Morning Pages
I’ve kept a journal of sorts most of my life but, my journal writing was different:
- I don’t just write in my journal. I draw… diagrams. Lots of them: mind maps, block diagrams, graphs, floor plans, machine parts…
- I write in my journal when I need to; not at an appointed time.
- Many, maybe most, of my journal entries are intended to be read later. I record things I want to recall.
- My journal entries are sometimes just ranting, Sometimes just an account of what has transpired but, they are often a record of my thought process as I’m working on a project or idea.
So, while on my …Artists’s Way journey, morning pages almost always felt like a chore. I felt like the middle school kid counting the words in his homework essay.
Completing three pages of handwritten prose consumed 30 minutes of my precious pre-day-job morning, every morning. I pretty quickly began to resent the time spent on morning pages. I hung with it nevertheless. The resentment was about spending time writing something I wouldn’t ever read, versus time practicing my craft! Rather than scratching out three pages of write-only prose, I could be firing up Cubase and composing, or practicing the piano.
Cameron includes a couple Delacroix quotes in The Artist’s Way but, she left out this one:
“First learn to be a craftsman; it won’t keep
you from being a genius.” — Delacroix
The happy exceptions, when I did enjoy the morning pages, included times I would just repeat affirmations (like Bart writing on the blackboard in The Simpson’s opening sequence). Other times I was happy to just rant on the few mornings I had something to rant about.
Artist Dates
“Artist Dates” made a lot of sense. For me, these “dates” are about cultivating a sense of play and finding inspiration. I only wish I had time to do more of them. The prescription in the book is twice a week if I remember correctly. I’d be lucky to complete two in a month.
Before The Artist’s Way, I would do some activities that you could call Artist Dates. Once, I went to the workshop and built a model house out of cardboard….for no reason.
Synchronicity
My thoughts about synchronicity are evolving.
Working for decades in technical professions has only fortified my skeptical nature. When I read in The Artist’s Way how the universe would do nice things for me just because I wanted it to, I became rather uncomfortable.
Leap and the net will appear
—Julia Cameron
Statements like this triggered my skepticism. In the world I inhabit, this not only makes no sense, it seemed harmful. The net will not appear!
It didn’t help me, as a more or less agnostic person, that the word “God” was used so much in the section on synchronicity.
My rational brain tried to guess what synchronicity was about. Was it chance? Yeah, sure, if you do things to improve your chances of nice things happening, some of them might actually happen.
If one has an open mind, I thought, one might see some of the random things the universe is doing and see them as gifts.
But, I still felt like I was missing something. Was I being too closed minded? Is this about faith? Surely faith is important to creating. It does require a kind of leap.
Reading Deprivation
I have had a more general concept related to reading deprivation. It is a balance of input versus output.
Many years ago now, I wasn’t creating very much but, I was reading and consuming other media plenty. I resolved to be more aware of how much media I was consuming versus how much I was producing. (No more languid Sunday mornings reading the New York Times!)
This was before the internet became a thing. Today, it’s much more difficult to maintain balance. Those of us who have an office day job, with hundreds of emails each day, can appreciate how difficult it is to really deprive our selves of all reading for an entire week.
Time Management
I’m remembering exercises from The Artist’s Way that asked what goals we have for the day, for the week, for the month and for the year. This kind of thing seems very rational and is something I aspire to do more of.
Small Changes
The book’s exercises about making small changes reminds me of “one minute habits“. I’m a believer in this idea and I have it, and flossing, to thank for my improved oral health.
I’m having mixed results applying this strategy to my creative life however. I’m still trying though.
Affirmations
Once I got over feeling like Saturday Night Live‘s Stuart Smalley, I found the use of affirmations one of the most beneficial things in The Artist’s Way.
Time Travel
One of my favorite exercises from the program resulted in my going back to online comments from a very supportive community that I had found a few years ago. We all posted compositions and gave each other supportive, comments. I printed out a number of these that I had received. Seeing them all at once gave my ego a nice boost.
I found myself struggling a little bit with the some other time travel exercises. I simply could not recall many instances of my being really hurt or put down unfairly. Sure, I have received some negative, non-constructive, discouraging comments about my creative endeavors. The activity of revisiting them last summer, didn’t seem to unleash or generate much, if any, creative juice.
“it’s not very good.” — my friend upon hearing some of my music 30 years ago.
Another comment from an old friend: Something like: “You’re not really going anywhere with this. Your music is just like you, just kind of meandering”.
That last one led me to recall another old friend; this one from high school. When I expressed some doubts about a composition I had just made for the school’s band, she told me that my comments were not fair, that I was only 16 years old, and it was amazing that I had actually done such an ambitious project. (This was before personal computers, digital audio workstations etc… All the parts were written out with pen and paper!)
Maybe my creative self has not sustained that much damage still in need of repair.
Or maybe, I need to look for insults in my more recent history, in other areas of my life, like my day job.
Closing Reflections
The Artist’s Way experience for me was a mixed bag. I took away some strength from affirmations and exercises recalling different forms of support I received over the years as well as the few artists’ dates I took myself on. But I can’t fully get behind morning pages and, I’m not sure i’m even the target audience for the program.
I felt like some prescribed activities were variations on activities I had already practiced.
After college a friend made an observation about my lifestyle. I was living alone in an apartment with one bedroom serving as a kind of electronics workshop. The living room was more like a music studio. I had very few friends and spent a lot of time alone. My friend’s observation: “you live like an artist!”
Now, 40-some years later, after reading The Artist’s Way, I have a better idea what he was talking about. It was a solitary life and my input-output balance favored creative output. (I wish I had today’s technology available to me back then – I could have done so much!)
Like I said, I was very much supported by my parents as a kid. And, I received plenty of support and encouragement from friends and family. So I feel that was the reason I struggled with those time travel exercises, looking for injuries.
Cameron does say that the exercises one seems to struggle with are, more often than not, the ones the person needs to focus on. Upon reflection months after putting the book down, I believe my injuries were more likely sustained more recently and not in my youth. I should revisit this.
Nevertheless, I often feel that what’s holding me back is simply a lack of willingness to do what it takes to improve.
My advice if you’re contemplating The Artist’s Way: look at your situation carefully. Do you need help convincing yourself that you are indeed a creative artist? If so, The Artist’s Way could be helpful for you. On the other hand if you believe you are a creative person and you’re just trying to take it to the next level, I would approach the book with awareness of what each exercise is intended to bring out and focus on the ones that will really help you.
I think some of my disappointment with the book has to do with my expectation, due to the subtitle, that The Artist’s Way would help me somehow be creative in new ways, to new levels.
And I can’t help but think. 30 minutes a day for a quarter of a year could have been better spent.
A final observation: I produced zero pieces of music, none, nada, zilch… while working through The Artist’s Way.
