Reviews

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition by Julia Cameron

efranzinger's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

travelight8's review against another edition

5.0

Wisdom drips off the pages. It was such a delightful, insightful, profound read. Julia Cameron knows exactly what she is talking about. I felt giddy with relief and happiness reading it, especially the beginning.

loutea's review

reflective relaxing slow-paced

2.0

dcmininni's review against another edition

1.0

First the good. This book has a few good tools and if you are struggling with discipline to work at your art then this book can help you with that.
While this book contains practical tools like the "daily pages" and "artist dates" there is far too much fluff and unverifiable mumbo jumbo to recommend it to anyone. For example,

"Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand. Anger is meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a map. Anger shows us what our boundaries are. Anger shows us where we want to go. It lets us see where we’ve been and lets us know when we haven’t liked it. Anger points the way, not just the finger. In the recovery of a blocked artist, anger is a sign of health."

There are also far too many second hand testimonials. For example,

Timothy, a buttoned-down, buttoned-lip curmudgeon millionaire, began writing morning pages with a skeptic’s scorn. He didn’t want to do them without some proof that they would work.The damn pages had no label, no Dun and Bradstreet rating. They just sounded silly, and Timothy hated silly.

Just tell me why I should do the "morning pages". Tell me what they do for me! Don't tell me about some guy's (that may or may not exist) experience with your program. I've already bought the damn book!
Following the "Artist's Way" in the book will help you if you are an artist and there is some good to come out of this book but the majority is just meaningless words meant for people who want to believe them.

"“Oh, all right . . .” Timothy agreed to the pages, but only because he had paid good money to be told to do them. Within three weeks, straightlaced, pin-striped Timothy became a morning-pages advocate. The results of his work with them convinced him. He started—heaven forbid—to have a little creative fun. “I bought guitar strings for this old guitar I had lying around,” he reported one week. And then, “I rewired my stereo."

Your Censor will start to object. “Hey, wait a minute. You can’t say all that positive stuff around me.” Objections will start to pop up like burnt toast. These are your blurts. Listen to the objections. Look at the ugly, stumpy little blurts. “Brilliant and prolific . . . sure you are. . . . Since when? . . . Can’t spell. . . . You call writer’s block prolific? . . . You’re just kidding yourself . . . an idiot . . . grandiose. . . . Who are you kidding? . . . Who do you think you are?” and so on. You will be amazed at the rotten things your subconscious will blurt out. Write them down. These blurts flag your personal negative core beliefs. They hold the key to your freedom in their ugly little claws. Make a list of your personal blurts.

"It’s time to do a little detective work. Where do your blurts come from? Mom? Dad? Teachers? Using your list of blurts, scan your past for possible sources. At least some of them will spring violently to mind. One effective way to locate the sources is to time-travel. Break your life into five-year increments, and list by name your major influences in each time block."

diane's review against another edition

5.0

The classic! This book always gives me food for thought (I first read it 20 years ago, but I'm counting it this time). Go do your morning pages. Go.

lesleylovestea's review against another edition

hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

2.5

thefoxicorn's review against another edition

1.0

I barely got through the first chapter before I decided to not finish this book. Cameron's writing style was hard for me to get through. It seemed more braggy and pretentious than helpful. Besides that, while I understand that in the beginning of the book Cameron addresses that you don't need to believe in God specifically to get through the book, there were so many references to a god that it was hard to get past to see any of the points the author may have had.

bookwyrmknits's review against another edition

2.5

Helpful in some ways, pretentious in others. However, this did help me a lot in some respects and I appreciate it for that. Personally, only a couple of chapters really helped me, but those couple of chapters were big boosts for me. I probably won't need to re-read this one ever again, and if I do I'll almost certainly cherry-pick which sections I read. Your mileage may vary.

pnwlisa's review

challenging hopeful inspiring slow-paced

5.0

languageandliterature's review against another edition

challenging hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced