Book Review: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

I'd heard a lot of good things from various successful people about Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, particularly about this daily activity called 'Morning Pages' that seemed to help focus their day.

I was curious to know more so I decided to buy the book and see what it was all about.

As it happens The Artist's Way is a self help, Twelve week program to assist you in discovering or rediscovering your creativity. As such it's not a book you want to read cover to cover just to get the information. To get the full benefit it's designed so you can read a chapter each week and do the activities, until you've completed the full twelve weeks.

Which is what I chose to do, with every intention of following the course as instructed, but as I started reading, I just didn't recognize the person this book is reaching out to.

Initial impression

The book is intended to help you discover or rediscover your creativity. It does so by assuming the reader is largely creatively blocked and in a place of either low self esteem or not feeling worthy of being considered a 'creative'.

The more I read, the more I thought, who is this person the book is speaking to? I quickly got the impression that this book wasn't really for me. Two things I'm not is creatively blocked, or feeling unworthy about calling myself an 'artist'.

I have a 'to do list' of creative ideas so long I doubt I'll ever get through everything on it during my lifetime. I keep adding to it, if not daily, certainly weekly. I love thinking up new ideas and getting started on them... it's completely what I do best.

I don't have any hang ups about calling myself an artist, though these days I prefer to add other vocations like writer, animator, video producer, etc. because artist really limits the perception of what I do creatively. That aside, other people have described me as an artist since I was at least eight years old.

I'm an artist... I only went to art school because career counselors told me formal qualifications would make it easier to secure work... not because I wanted to train to be an 'artist'. Don't get me wrong, I did learn a whole lot more about art in those three years.

Anyway, I told you all that because it really affected how I received the rest of the book.

Weekly Activities

The two main activities are writing your daily morning pages, and having a weekly 'Artist's Date'.

I did commit to writing my morning pages - which are essentially a stream of conscious period of writing whatever is in your head. No filter, just write and don't stop until you've done about three pages each morning. The more you do it the more you eventually start writing thoughts that maybe wouldn't have come through the usual surface clutter of your mind.

I'm still writing my morning pages weeks after finishing the book but I'm still questioning how useful they are and whether, ultimately I'll keep going with them.

Note that I used the Pomodoro Method for writing my pages, setting a 40 minute timer. Any time I had left over I added random sketching in my sketchbook (stream of conscious sketching if you will). I did this because I really don't draw on paper enough anymore.

Some of my morning sketches. This page
was drawn in twelve minutes.

If you're a visual artist I'd highly recommend adding sketching to your morning pages. Just draw lines and shapes until they turn into something. Don't think about it. It would take me just over 30 minutes to write my morning pages, giving me roughly 10 minutes to sketch each day. I really love looking back over some of those sketches (because I'm more cartoonist than straight up artist I drew a bunch of characters in all different styles, any one that could be the start of something in the future).

Artist Dates, I really tried, but found, I'd really just rather use the time to create stuff. The point is to go out, treat yourself, be inspired, energized, enjoy life etc. etc. but I'd just rather work on my art, projects, and be creative.

When I need a break I go out on my skateboard, plus I take my dog for a walk for over an hour every day too. At the same time I started reading The Artist's Way I decided I was going to learn the Ukulele (having recently bought one) so I really felt I was set for having other distractions not related to being an artist.

Granted, I believe I probably would have benefited from Artist Dates. I think they're a good idea. I may try to adopt this more in the future.

The book has many other 'one off' activities to complete as you go. Typical things like creating vision boards, identifying people who help or hinder you, and so on. Like with the artist dates I felt all the activities were just too much effort. If I tried to do all of them there would be no time left in the week to do my own art/projects... so I didn't do any of them... not even the weekly reviews after the first chapter.

Summing Up

Honestly, I'm sure this book helped on some level. It inspired me to do daily sketching which I'm definitely going to keep up regardless of whether I keep going with morning page or not. I just really enjoy looking at the sketches, and I do find they inspire ideas.

Speaking of morning pages. I'm not really sure I got the concept of these. At some point you're meant to get deep and meaningful with your thoughts but much of the time I'm using them to write a diary of the previous day, what I did and how I felt about it. Since there's no 'wrong' way to write morning pages, maybe that's enough for me? Occasionally I'll go deeper but not often. That's my dilemma. How useful is a diary? Would I rather use that 30 minutes more productively if I don't feel the pages are all that productive?

I can see if you're really stuck with artist's block or not really sure about whether you're really ready to release the artist within, The Artist's Way could very well be the book for you. A lot of the tasks will help you organize your thoughts and give you confidence to stop being judgemental about whether you really have a creative bone in your body.

For me, though... it's not really what I was expecting. It wasn't speaking to me in a way I felt I could identify with. I did get some tips and useful ideas but I'm not creatively blocked or lacking any confidence about my art.

Most definitely a self help book for anyone needing a boost in confidence about their creative potential. If that's not you then maybe you'll get some tips but otherwise, reading isn't going to be quite as inspirational.

The Artist's Way is available from Amazon.

* This article contains Amazon Associate commission links that help keep this site free.

Comments

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Second Sunday Skateboard Session Ep 2 - Some Improvements

TET heelflip - looking better but still not a land. A s of writing this I've stuck to my plan of filming myself skate every second Sunday. By the time this post goes up I will have three episodes done. As part of that goal I am also skating more between episodes, about every second to third day for an hour, practicing Braille's Skateboarding Made Simple, Volume 1. That said, I'm not posting these videos here immediately after they're posted to my @TETLife YouTube Channel because I only post an article once a week, and that would make every second article a Sunday Session post. These posts are really so I can add some additional thoughts after the fact, and, of course, because this blog is about all things that interest me, of which skateboarding is one of them. In episode two I had intended to speak to camera more than I do but my driveway is right next door to my neighbor's shed/workshop, and I get a little self-conscious if I'm not too sure whether he's th...

The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Image to Video Generator to Animate Art That Started as a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch

B ack in October of 2023 I used Prome AI's Sketch Rendering feature to color a 23 year old rough pen sketch I did of a princess watching butterflies, sitting next to a waterfall in the forest. You can read more about that in my previous article, The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Art Generator to Color and Enhance a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch The three images I used to create my final image (bottom right). Notice how closely the AI has followed my line art sketch (top left) but in the first image (top right) has misinterpreted the waterfall as some kind of large tree stump. Prome's render of the artwork was pretty good but I did end up creating a composite image myself from two of the best renders, to get my final image. Since then AI Image to Video has come a long way, particularly when it comes to creating animation from artwork and maintaining the art style for the whole generation. AI still does much better with turning photographic images to video but I found ...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Australian Democrats (Please Like Us Again) and The Greens

Image: Reve AI T here's not much to be said about the current Australian Democrats other than in 2025 Australian election, in May, they'll be out there hoping they win a seat... any seat... 'please like us again!' The Australian Democrats For just over two decades, from the late seventies onward, the Australian Democrats were the third most important party in the Federal government (if you don't count the National party since they've been on that coalition ticket with the Liberals for as long as I can remember). In fact, once I moved away from the Labor party, they were my top pick until the party slowly imploded in the early 2000's from a series of unfortunate events like leaders defecting to other parties, and a highly publicised incident of drunkenness, bullying, and abuse from a male party leader to a female colleague. It's been two decades since then (and that guy's with the Greens now)... please like us again! That aside, the party is still t...

The Australian Federal Election 2025 Could Be a Win For Independents

Australian Democrats founder, Senator Don Chipp, embodied the role of minor parties holding the balance of power with his quote of "keep the bastards honest." Photo Manipulated Caricature by TET. A s of writing this, the actual Australian Federal Election date has yet to be announced, as our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, attempts to keep the focus on the fallout of severe weather events in Queensland, however it's looking likely that some time in May is the safest bet. Despite this, all parties have been hard at campaigning, with smaller parties, and in particular, conservative independent candidates, seemingly rallying together to make sure people know how much influence they can have just by preventing the two major parties (Labor and the Liberal/National coalition) from having a majority in either (or both) houses of parliament. They're also doing their part to make sure voters finally understand that preferential voting works in everybody's favor over one ...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Making an Effort to Be a President Trump Free Zone - Final Rant (I Hope)

I hope the American people, who voted for President Trump, get the full experience of what they thought they voted for along with what they're actually getting. Now may be a good time for them to learn to speak Russian because if World War Three does break out, it's not beyond possibility that it'll be the USA and Russia against the rest of the world, as Trump appears to be emboldening Russia to dig in on their attack on the Ukraine. China, may opt to stay neutral, or even join forces with the rest of the world because they've been quietly winning an economic war with so many countries, they may not care so much about the USA. Especially since President Trump wants to bring manufacturing back to America and impose tariffs on every country exporting anything to the USA. After that fiasco meeting President Zelenskyy had in the Oval Office with President Trump I've pretty much had enough. I'm not writing about what new dumb ass thing Trump's doing this week. ...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog