The Artist's Way
The Artist's Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist's life. Still as vital today-or perhaps even more so-than it was when it was first published one decade ago, it is a powerfully provocative and inspiring work. In a new introduction to the book, Julia Cameron reflects upon the impact of The Artist's Way and describes the work she has done during the last decade and the new insights into the creative process that she has gained. Updated and expanded, this anniversary edition reframes The Artist's Way for a new century.
Stats for nerds
27recommend
47mentions
39people
2009–2025years
70% recommend28% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- There’s a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. One of the main tasks is writing three pages every morning, called The Morning Pages. I personally find the first two pages quite quick and easy, but it’s that third page where the interesting stuff comes out.
I’m nine weeks into the twelve week program and it has taken me on an incredible journey of self discovery. Memories from childhood, dreams and hopes for the future. All of them uncovered to explore.
There’s something beautiful about writing with a fountain pen and paper. Setting aside time every day to dive deep and see what comes out.
- "Reading and writing more" are just aspirations. Those don't translate well to new behaviors. BJ Fogg (Stanford prof, behavioral scientist) lays out how to build new behaviors in Tiny Habits. You need to make them easy and attach the easy thing to something you already do regularly. (When I sit down to lunch, I read one page...) https://tinyhabits.com/
Secondly, your mind is interfering with its own work. Tim Gallwey talks about this in the Inner Game of Tennis (which is not really about tennis! ;). Your critic is not allowing you to "run hot" and put down some words that are less than perfect. It would be helpful to find something to focus your mind on, a simple count, like key strokes or word count. Alternatively, there's the practice of Morning Pages from the Artist's Way. Just let yourself write anything for a while. It's not for publication. You need to open the gates and you can do that by lowering the stakes involved with putting a word on the page.
Inner Game
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance...
Artists Way
https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/01431...
I wrote about some other stuff here that helps.
https://vonnik.substack.com/p/a-few-ideas-that-made-my-life-...
- Took up journaling late last year on Julia Cameron’s suggestion (“The Artist’s Way” prescribes for artists a daily, morning free writing exercise). It is a distinctly effective way to neutralize ruminating thoughts, pull apart confusing feelings, de-censor myself from myself; simply put, I have been able to raise my consciousness through journaling.
- I recommend the artist’s way [0].
[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/615570.The_Artist_s_Way
- > One way around that is this beautiful exercise called “morning pages.” You set an alarm clock for 30 minutes, and you just type or write. Don’t stop to correct anything. Don’t stop to make it good. Just plow ahead. Write about anything while trying not to repeat yourself. This primes the pump and gets the gunk out.
I've done this technique and it's really amazing to learn to tame the inner critic.
AFAIK the origin is the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
- the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron kinda does this for some things. It did help me a lot, I guess you could say it taught me the art of "self parenting".
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