Julia Cameron Brings Out Creativity in Artists Way

I loved Artists Way by Julia Cameron. The book was a weekly group course designed to bring out the best of artists. There are morning pages - a three page stream of consciousness exercise written out every morning - and artists dates - a way of rewarding the writer with things done by themselves, like going to a movie or for a walk by yourself. In each weekly meeting you report how well you did that week: if you wrote your morning pages every day, and whether you went on an artists date or not. The course goes twelve weeks.

Writers are by nature negative on their own works. Cameron battles this with constant action: you will write every day no matter what, and you will reward yourself with solitary actions - these are all designed to strengthen the artist's creativity.

The first time I tried it I was still pretty unsure of my writing and quit. But when I stuck with it the second time, there was no looking back. I was only interested in the writing aspects, but this book is for any artist. It was also a way to meet other writers.

The book got me in the habit of writing, of "accumulating pages, not judgements." Mathematically, by the end of the group you should have written out 252 pages; that's close to a novel.

Soon I changed the setup. Instead of writing in the morning i would write at night - I called these my night pages. Then i found myself writing both in the morning and at night, and it wasn't stream of consciousness anymore; fiction started coming out of me.

I don't look at those morning pages much anymore. I found myself repeating myself often. Yet the idea is sound. Better yet, you get to meet other creative people. I met a great group of people and it spawned into another private writing group.

The book disciplines the writers taking the course. At the beginning of the book a contract is signed, where the writer promises to write the morning pages, take the artists date, and agrees to do some of the other suggested activities for each week.