With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity.

It changes lives

I bought The Artist's Way because two people told me it changed their lives and I figured it must be pretty powerful. Just couldn't get into it. But I persisted and formed a group to study the book with me. Fantastic! I really think it's best understood as a group works through it, sharing ideas and insights. Obviously those who are already highly creative might not find it helpful, but most of us need help to find our creative selves. I've facilitated two creativity groups which have been meeting for several years. Cameron's book, I believe, has changed all of us, strengthening our sense of self and opening us to new creative possibilities. Some of the exercises may seem silly, but invariably the ones which felt crazy to me helped someone else and visa versa. The lady knows what she's doing; the universe does fling open unsuspected doors. It's changed my life in some amazing ways.

It inspired me to write this...

Firstly, I like it when people want to get creative, get down with the parts of themselves that they haven't done that, paint, write, do the things they want to and I truly wish this book would help would help rather than hinder that process.

To vent my spleen first...Ms. Cameron's work is like being forcefed a nasogastric tube of industrial grade saccharine. To be blunt, I liked The Artist's Way better when it was Creative Visualization. I am familiar with self-help books remixing and recombining new ideas, but a lot of The Artist's Way seems entirely too much like Creative Visualization; I also feel that what Ms. Cameron adds can be detrimental rather than helpful.

Ms. Cameron's few reasonable ideas get caught up in reams of exercises that don't seem to lead to much in the way of artistic development and had me thinking " Well, I could write a story in the time it would take me to do Morning Pages and have a date with my inner artist child".
Throughout The Artist's Way, it seems that the only art being produced is cure-centric and it seems like Ms. Cameron has cornered the market on this particular malady. There are a few decent ideas--taking time for oneself is one, as is journaling--but the context, I think, saps them of any real usefulness.
Likewise, Ms. Cameron namedrops about the films she had produced, her plays and her former relationship with Scorsese, which strikes me as questionable at best; there is little said about her current efforts, which may be telling since it seems like The Artist's Way is it. At any rate, it does give me enough pause to mention it.
Plus, the suggestion of a week without reading or media struck me as really privileging one form of creative output over another; some artists thrive on the interplay of texts, the mixup between them and what happens when they collide and it rubbed me the wrong way. I also found her discussion of art and sexuality to be at the best, questionable (ie, her revelation that artists don't need to be promiscuous (or substance users )and that female artists don't need to be gay strikes me as tacky and yet another weird form of privilege that seems to lie under much of the text.

This book may help some people, but a lot of her approach really left me cold. For all of her insistence that there are many ways to be creative, there seems to be only one way--and that's hers.
(Likewise, something about Ms. Cameron's book really screams"Take the class and buy the notebooks too!")

Overall, I'm certain this book has helped some people, but it seems like it can leave a lot to be desired--the sexuality issue is a hot one for me, as is the unspoken praise of a particular kind of art. Still, journalling and meditating are good in whatever form you get them and I'm glad that this book has helped some people-- I just wish there wasn't all this weirdness to wade through to get there.

I'm guessing the audience for this book is more of a suburban one that does need a wakeup call for a happier and/or more creative life. Good for them for wanting a wakeup call and working towards it and I do hope this book gets them some joy; however, I think that the cure may be worse than the disease in Cameron's work.

It will change your life if you let it

A very dear friend bought this for me - Nakissa if you read this get in touch! - and the book changed my life. I am a journalist by profession, but thought that I didn't have the right to write my own stories, only other people's. Well this book transformed all that, made me see where I had been blocked and all the internal baggage about what 'being creative' meant, that I had been carrying around without realising! Once I got clear of all that I started taking my dream of being an author and my creative impulses seriously, thanked the Creator for blessing me with this gift and I am now working seriously on my first novel. It's been a long time coming but I WILL get there. Thanks Julia.