Writer Wednesday: The Artist’s Way

Writer Wednesday: The Artist’s Way

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Welcome to Writer Wednesday! This is where I either post Q&As with guest authors or blog about writing craft issues for novels and children’s picture books and TV writing.

This is a short blog because I’ve actually been WRITING! πŸ™‚ I’ve also been curious about the famous “Artist’s Way” books by Julia Cameron. I know tons of people love her books and swear by her methods, while others roll their eyes and dismiss her books as too “New Age”-y.

As for me, I love new projects. πŸ™‚ So I figured, out of curiosity, I’d try reading her books and see if they can keep me inspired as I write. I write all the time, and I can sometimes get burned out from all that hard work. So I’m addicted to writing books. I think they’re fun. πŸ™‚ I started reading her books and realized it wasn’t fair for cynics (including myself) to dismiss her work as New Age-y. She actually brings up some important points about the creative process that I found extremely enlightening.

(Keep reading after the jump for more on The Artist’s Way…)

I know Cameron’s first book recommends the famous process of “morning pages.” This is where you write, non-stop, until you finish writing 3 pages worth of material. It can be about anything you want. This is where the cynic in me rolled my eyes because I write all the time. I write every single day. So I thought that I didn’t need this “morning pages” exercise.

But in teaching classes on writing, I realized that wasn’t a fair assessment of Cameron’s books. I should stop being so cynical and narrow minded! I realized… even though I write every day, it’s usually work-related (script deadlines or book projects). It’s never just me simply WRITING. So now I’m intrigued by her “morning pages” ritual as well as her other chapters on ways to enhance creative thinking and fun stuff like “artist dates.”

Plus, I love trying new things and having new experiences. So I plan to read her books and see if I can follow her “program.” Anything to keep me motivated and focused on finishing my own writing projects! πŸ™‚

Julia Cameron’s other two books in this “journey” include WALKING IN THIS WORLD and FINDING WATER.

Walking in This World by Julia Cameron

Finding Water by Julia Cameron

For more information on Cameron and her books, go here:Β http://www.theartistsway.com/Β I hope to post occasional blogs on how I fare on my own “Artist’s Journey” this fall.. it’s been fun so far! So stay tuned! πŸ™‚

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Thanks for reading my brief WRITER WEDNESDAY blog for this week. Have any of you tried these Artist’s Way books? I’m curious to hear your thoughts and experiences. Cynics also welcome because believe me, I do a lot of eye-rolling myself. πŸ™‚ But I’m Β open minded and curious to read these books seriously and see if they can inspire me to keep writing!

Stay tuned for some awesome Guest Author Q&As coming soon (blog here:Β https://paulayoo.com/blog/?p=763). And come back for tomorrow’s TUNA THURSDAY blog about my cats. Until then… HAPPY WRITING! WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! πŸ™‚

 

3 Responses

  1. Ella says:

    Wow, I was just thinking about The Artist’s Way this week! The main reason is that I am in the midst of a terrible writer’s block – haven’t even touched my journal since early July – and was wondering how to come out of it. I had heard of TAW through an aspiring writer friend who used to attend an AW group in LA; there also was one in London at the time but when I contacted them they had disappeared. (A similar thing happened to my friend’s group in LA but since then I have had experiences with groups in both cities – however, that’s another story!)

    So I decided to buy the book and go at it on my own. For the first couple weeks I did most of the tasks to the letter, but then I realized that adapting things to fit your own situation was not really cheating. So if I only had time to write one or two morning pages, so be it. And you are not meant to write MPs on a topic, but I broke that rule too; I found I was much more inspired to wake up and write if I could continue on from what I had written the day before, which was trying to remember every detail of various events in my past. Because I had lost 12 years of detailed daily journals, this was a form of healing therapy for me.

    And some of the tasks I simply could not do; the week when you were not allowed to read, for instance, apart from work-related duties. (At the time I was working as a book editor!) A lot of the exercises seemed to be designed for people who had a lot of other people in their lives depending on them and clamoring for their time. Apart from my high maintenance ultra neurotic boss, I had no one, and though I didn’t have too much free time (partly cause I worked so much) the spending time alone bits weren’t really necessary as I did that anyway!

    But it did help; in April of that year I had signed up to do a one person show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August, and I had to expand a piece that was only 10 minutes long to an hour. In order to finish writing I took myself off to an artist’s weekend in Brighton. I found a very funky seaview room in an apparently haunted manor house with a big armchair. After an early dinner I stopped in the garden as the owner of the place had invited me for a complimentary drink. He had a boy in a fez cap scurrying around with a silver platter, constantly refilling my wine glass. In the meantime the owner and all his friends (who apparently came over for this garden session every Saturday evening) were trying to talk me into going out to dinner with them, but I kept telling them I had to write. (‘Oh! Here we have the new J K Rowling!’)

    Finally made it back to my room, sat down in the big comfy chair, switched on the laptop, and promptly passed out! In the morning, after a leisurely breakfast (leisurely service-wise that is) and a long phone call from my boss (asking me to go spend a few hours with his Bengal cat), and a very long wait for the shared bathroom, I still had an hour to sit in the armchair and write. Wrong! The checkout time was 11, not 12 as I had mistakenly thought.

    Ended up staying up all night on a weeknight and getting it done, as I had a rehearsal straight after work. I’ve always worked well under pressure, but I’m not sure I would have been in peak form had I not got my juices flowing from doing TAW!

    • paulayoo says:

      Ella! Great to hear from you. I love your very detailed anecdote about TAW. This is helpful to hear other people’s experiences to compare to my own and the results it produces. WOW. Thank you so much! I’ll let you know how my journey goes too!

  2. Ella says:

    P.S. I somehow left out something in my first graf: I have been thinking about the book lately, but the story I told is from 2003!

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