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

Product Information

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. 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? When we get ‘there’, there disappears” writes Julia, so we may as well focus on the running, not the end. Week 12: Letting go This words could not have come at a better time: “Stop complaining about the lousy curves you get thrown and stretch, reach for what you really want,” writes Julia. Tasked with asking myself what next steps I am evading, I realised I had to make decision about a trip to New York City I had talked about since the beginning of the year. Money, timing, and fear all got in the way, but the next step was to decide, so I booked the flight.

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

It also points us towards what we want to do, and as Julia Cameron writes, “the how follows the what.” 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. When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain.” Each time I sat down to write I took note of an internal objections and negative beliefs the subconscious mind blurts out. One reoccurring blurt was “I should be working” – even though I was writing, it felt like I wasn’t work because it wasn’t paid work. 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.Rather than a tool for vanity, exercise teaches us about the rewards of the process, not the outcome.

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

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?” Cooperation with our creativity takes time, and we have to remember that we can often sense our own changing and experience a sense of grief for our old life. There’s something new opening up, I just don’t know what, and that’s okay. In fact, it’s extraordinary. Where to from here? Notes on the elusiveness of delight and desire We spend energy on self-doubt, self-hatred, regret, grief, jealousy and think in terms of great big scary impossible tasks. 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. Just like the bends of a river, things don’t pay off in a linear fashion – there is no neat sequence of events once you’ve made a step, but the important thing is to become internally clear on dreams, desires and delights.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. When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain,” writes Julia. 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. I now have autonomy with my time and a capacity for paying attention to something else, something delightful, something that I feel truly connected to. Maybe even that book proposal. Week 3: Anger and jealousy are a map

The Artist’s Way Everything I learned from (finally) completing The Artist’s Way

I expect to hit the ground running immediately, but I can hear a familiar voice inside my mind telling me this has been a mistake, that I can’t afford to be here financially, that I’ve taken a wrong turn and I should focus on finding a job, a real job. I learned what can only be learned through going inward, even if that means looking like you’re doing nothing from the outside. 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. Just over 30 years ago, Julia Cameron’s agent gave her the immortally bad advice that no one was going to be interested in a book about creativity. “What on earth are you doing?” the agent demanded. What do we do when we are in the drought? We stumble through because it is “the time in the desert brings us clarity.”When we start with joy, the discipline will follow. The question bubbles up again – what do I enjoy? What do I desire? Why does this continue to elude me? This week felt like a lot of question-asking and meetings, but no step taking. Does this mean I am searching for the joy? Week 10: overwork v. zestful work It’s interesting, to finish a book I’ve heard time and time again will change your life, and to not feel completely drastically changed. My book proposal is still being reworked, the podcast is still just in the pipeline, and I’m still unsure about what truly, deeply, delights me. Even without alcohol, there is still room for improvement in respect to how I’m using my time – which is often being the busy worker bee and feeling overwhelmed or worries about money rather than attending to important creative work.