Name: Vea's review of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
Item: The Artist's Way
Rating: 5
Author: Vea

Julia Cameron

Presents a twelve-week program intended to increase creativity by capturing the creative energy of the universe.

A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

The Artist's Way

KZAaaam

Much fear of our own creativity is the fear of the unknown. 

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 light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the touch.

The artist brain cannot be reached-or triggered-effectively by words alone. The artist brain is the sensory brain: sight and sound, smell and taste, touch. These are the elements of magic, and magic is the elemental stuff of art.

Nikkita

Whenever one avenue for her creativity was blocked, she found another. 

Have you ever longed to be able to draw or paint, write or compose music? With The Artist's Way you can discover how to unlock your latent creativity and make your dreams a reality. With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron leads you through a comprehensive 12-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. This book links creativity to spirituality by showing how to connect with the creative energies of the universe. The Artist's Way provides a twelve-week course that guides you through the process of recovering your creative self. It dispels the 'I'm not talented enough' conditioning that holds many people back and helps you unleash your own inner artist. Its step-by-step approach will enable you to: start out on your own path to creativity, dissolve the barriers that prevent your creative impulse from finding expression, use your rediscovered talents in whatever way you wish, learn that it is never too late to start fulfilling your dreams. The Artist's Way helps demystify the creative process by making it part of your daily life. It tackles your self-doubts, self-criticism and worries about time, money and the support to pursue your creative dream. It has already helped thousands of people to uncover their hidden talents - it can help you, too.

anna

Kyler Phillips

I went into it a bit skeptical, but it’s super efficient. You work through tasks each week and learn more about your creative inner self and how to connect with your own creativity. I definitely recommend it if you feel creatively stuck.

Need of the hour for creatives. Opens your mind up in such fascinating ways. Best way to work through a burnout. Whenever I have picked this book up it (2 times over the span of 4 years) it has resulted in a shift in my creative work & thinking.

Ujjwala Bassi

you have to be willing to do the tasks - but when you do, it’s life changing. Highly recommend creating a weekly bookclub to hold yourself accountable - I did and it helped so much!

Adele Etheridge Woodson

Rebecca C Wright

This book gives clear steps for how to integrate creativity into your daily life. Learning to do "morning pages" had helped me work through writer's block and empty my brain of all the thoughts that distract me from actually getting words on paper.

a spiritual path to higher creativity

The artist's way

rumbledethumps

I tried. I really did. But this was just not my cup of tea. I made it through about 5 weeks, then I finished reading the book to see what was coming. I realized I was not going to do the whole program.

This is very much a recovery book, complete with its 12 weeks. Each chapter/week is titled "Recovering a Sense of [something]." God and spirituality play a prominent role in this program. And this is all well and good for people who feel the need to recover their creativity. But there is a large sense of victimhood permeating it. She mentions tossing "a low self-worth shirt into the giveaway pile." What does this even mean?

And with victimhood comes the idea that other people have been keeping us down all our lives and now it's finally time to be assertive and not let all of those people tell us who we are. In other words, it's time to be selfish, and start acting like a spoiled artist so we can become one. 

We are urged to repeat the mantra, "Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong." (What happens when nobody else treats you that way?) She feels sorrow for a man who wants a darkroom for himself, but instead his family buys a needed couch, and for another man who wants to vacation alone but knows it will hurt his wife's feelings. Because, this is all about treating the artist within as child, and "re-parenting" yourself. Who cares if that child becomes a spoiled brat?

There are a couple of good things I took away from it, the two things most people seem to take away from it: morning pages and the artist's date. But they don't need to have the spiritual recovery patina on them in order to work. Just use them to explore.

Overall this just wasn't for me. I'm more of a "Do the Work" kind of person, someone who believes "the muse" shows up because it knows where to find you: sitting at your desk or in your studio or wherever it is you sit your butt and work every day.

Nelson Zagalo

"The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity" (1992) é um livro muito problemático, porque contém ideias muito interessantes misturadas com ideias muito censuráveis. Claramente que apelando ao nosso sentido crítico qualquer um pode extrair a parte boa e negligenciar a má, contudo é preciso ter algum arcaboiço de experiência de vida para compreender os problemas do que vai sendo apresentado, o que não acontecerá com alguém até aos vinte e poucos anos. Isto torna-se ainda mais problemático quando o livro serve exatamente melhor alguém em crescimento, alguém em busca do seu caminho, com necessidade de alguém que lhe fale daquilo que sente, e que lhe diga que não está sozinho. Em parte, quase me atreveria a dizer que para quem está na bifurcação das escolhas de futuro profissional, o livro pode ser todo ele bastante interessante, mesmo o lado mau, já que ele funciona como um garante extra de motivação para essa escolha. Contudo considero que deixar-se seduzir por este tipo de discurso, apesar de poder ajudar nessa fase, pode vir a trazer bastantes dissabores, mais à frente, quando se perceber que a realidade é distinta daquela aqui apresentada.

Vou elencar alguns dos elementos imensamente positivos e relevantes para quem pretende seguir uma carreira artística, seguido dos vários problemas enunciados ao longo do discurso:

Lado Positivo e Criativo

. Proposta de escrita de "morning pages" (todos os dias de manhã escrever 3 páginas do que nos vier à cabeça, para alguns isto já acontece com o Diário, para outros com um blog)
. Proposta de escrever a partir do nosso passado, a partir de sonhos não realizados, de gostos e preferências de criança, de objetos espaços e locais que falam ao nosso Eu.
. Proposta de escrever sobre vidas imaginárias que gostaríamos de ter vivido.
. Todo o modo como trabalha os bloqueios criativos, especialmente os medos e a baixa autoestima para garantir a criação de espaços e tempos criativos, tal como pararmos de nos recriminarmos, de nos culpar, queixar, ou questionar a capacidade de fazer.


Lado Problemático

Para além de ser um livro de auto-ajuda, vem ainda disfarçado de livro de terapia, o que acentua o problema destes livros, que se baseiam na mera experiência pessoal da autora, suportados em mero anedotário, não corroborados por quaisquer estudos. Funcionará muito bem para pessoas que se enquadrem no tipo de personalidade e experiência de vida da autora, mas dirá muito pouco a uma grande parte de leitores. Alguns dos exemplos problemáticos que esta abordagem nos dá:

. Uma visão demasiado assente em princípios teológicos, disfarçados pelos conceitos do movimento New Age.
. Uma visão demasiado egocêntrica, por vezes quase a roçar o Objetivismo de Ayn Rand 
. Demasiada ingenuidade (ou de sobranceria) quanto às definições da Arte, agravando-se na definição do Artista.


Se querem um livro sobre como desenvolver-se como artista, não posso deixar de recomendar vivamente o livro de Stephen King “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” (2000), ainda que baseado na experiência do autor, resulta de um método aplicado durante décadas, com largos frutos, não havendo lugar a justificações transcendentes. O que é feito neste livro é a tradução em texto de um processo criativo, que permite a qualquer pessoa aprender pela imitação, sem espaço para qualquer autopiedade.

Por outro lado, e agora falando em concreto das pessoas, porque isso é também relevante, já que a autora faz questão de trazer a sua vida pessoal para o centro da cena, a verdade é que pesquisando a vida e obra de Julia Cameron, não existe aquilo que à partida pareceria existir, ou seja, uma vida de produções artísticas, nem grandes nem pequenas, apenas uma mão cheia, sendo a coisa mais importante um episódio da série Miami Vice, e o casamento de um ano com Martin Scorsese. Cameron escreveu mais de 20 livros, mas todos após o sucesso deste, e todos a falar destas mesmas coisas. Ou seja, seguir Cameron não é um processo de imitação do processo de desenvolvimento de um artista, mas antes ouvir boas palavras de incentivo à persistência. No fundo Cameron tornou-se uma guru da autoajuda para iniciantes ou desejosos de se tornarem artistas, e isso também explica muito das discussões em sua defesa que encontramos na net.

Publicado no VI: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

taylor

I had to read this and follow along each week with the exercises for my creative thinking class. I actually enjoyed it. It did help me want to create and appreciate my own art. I feel like I will definitely come back to this book at some point when I’m feeling blocked.

Ugis

Inspirational and life-changing book. Writing The Morning Pages opened up lot of wounds and healing started. Although the book has dated a bit and some activities I'd do differently, still I would recommend this to all struggling artists, no matter what kind of art they're dealing with. [reading time: 8h51m]

Cams Campbell

Julia R. Santos 

The exercises seem excellent, and I tried my best to look past the cliches and love this book like so many others do. I could not, however, get past the entitlement of some passages. This entire program, regardless of its effectiveness, is predicated on privilege. The privilege of an uninterrupted half hour for morning pages. The privilege of not being in poverty, of not being a single mother, of being able-bodied, of living in a safe place. The privilege even of being able to believe a loving Creator. Faith is also a privilege. Anyway, I ramble. There is a degree of compassion and acknowledgment of diversity that could have accompanied this book. Other than that, it is quite a nice read.

Anyaconda

There are some really good points in here.

c🍎

Martine Ellis

Artist's Way

Elizabeth Giuffra

Samuel Dellicour

Brianna Jones

Abbie Duggan

daniela

nandi

Julia Cameron keeps row after row of journals on the wooden bookcase in her writing room, all containing Morning Pages from more than twelve years of her life. The journals, she says, listen to her. They have been company on travels, and she is indebted to them for consolation, advice, humor, sanity. Now the bestselling author of The Artist's Way offers readers the same companion, in which we may discover ourselves, our fears and aspirations, and our life's daily flow. Readers will find privacy, a portable writing room, where our opinions are for our own eyes. Morning Pages prioritize the day, providing clarity and comfort. With an introduction and instructions on how to use this journal, by Julia Cameron, readers will uncover the history of their spirits as they move their hands across the universe of their lives.

Kyler Phillips &
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

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