The Artist's Way: Workbook: A Companion to the International Bestseller

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I still don’t feel clear on what I am doing – am I writing a book? Am I building on a freelance career? Am I making a podcast? Am I growing an event series? I spend a lot of time thinking about the doing in most of the aforementioned cases, but have no idea overall what I am doing. Do people actually know the answer to this? So many of this week’s lessons resonate with what I’ve unearthed in the conversations I’ve had with creatives and own personal principles – creativity’s chief need is support and the key is to keep trying and experimenting. When starting out, I could run for less than five minutes on a treadmill. By week eight of the book, I hit my goal of running 5km without stopping. When you try something and keep trying, it might just work. I reached that goal, and I keep running, for clarity and focus and steadiness.

The Artist’s Way Workbook (UK 2020) | Julia Cameron Live

A resounding message throughout the chapters has been that it’s important to experiment with what works for you. I learned what can only be learned through going inward, even if that means looking like you’re doing nothing from the outside. Emotions that might feel counterintuitive such as anger are actually a map. “It tells us we can’t get away with our old life any longer. It tells us that old life is dying,” writes Julia. Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist – hiding in the shadows, afraid to step out and expose the dream to the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the torch. My high expectations and lofty plans often mean that I want to leap over the small, incremental steps and dive straight into the impossible tasks. “The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce at all,” she writes.

I haven’t been audacious enough – I have failed. This is a belief, not a fact. “We are the thinker of the thoughts, not the thoughts,” as Julia writes. I open up the first test podcast and begin to stumble through the editing software I have no experience with. I judge it as bad, unworkable, and un-shareable – I still have a long way to go with my perfectionism it seems. Week 8: Real change occurs in tiny increments It didn’t feel like enough to simply write for my own sake, as if there has to be some other external recipient of the words rather than my own contentedness in writing them.

The Artist’s Way | Julia Cameron Live The Artist’s Way | Julia Cameron Live

Work begets work and taking one small step in action instead of indulging in the big questions can help us further along. Week 9: Fear is not lazinessThe book is divided into 12 chapters, one of which is to be read each week for the duration of the 12-week course. In moving through the mild-to-moderately woo-woo chapters featuring inspirational quotes from the likes of Toni Morrison, Simone DeBeauvoir, and Plato, the book guides the reader to heal and soothe their “inner artist child.” As Julia writes, “Any regular, repeatable action primes the well” and for me the seemingly non-creative act of running puts me into step with myself.

The Artist’s Way,’ and ‘Morning Pages’ Explained Review of ‘The Artist’s Way,’ and ‘Morning Pages’ Explained

This week, my artist date was to go to The Moth storytelling event solo, and I was in awe of how strangers got up on stage and told a story with no notes and full hearts. They were funny, touching, imperfect and the embodiment of the question in this chapter: “What would you do if you didn’t have to do it perfectly?” I often focus on the done – the book only when it gets the deal, the columns being published, the podcast being praised when it’s launched. I had ignored the doing, the writing, the recording and learning that all these dream projects contained. I’d skipped over process and progress, straight into perfection.This week, I committed to writing a short article every day to test the idea of taking care of the quantity and letting an external force take care of the quality. Rather than a tool for vanity, exercise teaches us about the rewards of the process, not the outcome. When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain.”

The Artist’s Way - Онлайн-клуб любителей The Artist’s Way - Онлайн-клуб любителей

I’ve also learned that the goal is not the point, it’s the running. Once I reached 5km, the treadmill did not evaporate – opportunity to keep running, keep taking strides remained. It’s the final chapter of the book and I have arrived in New York City with the intention of setting aside three months to work on the personal projects that I have carried with me the last few months – the podcast and the book. With encouragement – from others and importantly ourselves – we can begin to reframe any loss, rejection of criticism. I can easily put things into the “impossible” category, but as this week explored, often something is impossible only because we are looking too ahead or too narrowly at the things we desire. I logged my anxious thoughts for one day and it was helpful for staying focused on the task at hand – redoing my chapter outline for the book.From the ground below, my neighbor walks her Yorkie and hears my fading screams. She shields her eyes from the sun and stares at my disappearing body as it ascends to the heavens. Sighing, she shakes her head and turns to the tiny, crusty dog. Very often, when we cannot seem to find an adequate supply it is because we are insisting on a particular human source of supply,” writes Julia. When we get ‘there’, there disappears” writes Julia, so we may as well focus on the running, not the end. Week 12: Letting go According to me, I am no artist. But according to Julia Cameron — author, teacher, and creativity guru who first published The Artist’s Way almost 30 years ago — I, Emma Turetsky, am a brilliant and prolific artist, and through my creativity, I serve God! The creator! My inner child artist! And I must both shout it from the rooftops and write it in my notebook ten times for good measure!