A review by ladyk23
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron

challenging informative slow-paced

3.0

Initially I was quite excited to dive into The Artist’s Way - a book that had been sat on my book shelves for so long that I forgot I had it and bought it again (only second hand so it wasn’t expensive). I was inspired to actually start the journey by two factors: 1) it was January and I had no money, the nights were long and cold, and so committing to 12 weeks of TAW seemed like a wise way to spend my time in a way that wasn’t going to cost me anything. 2) An actress and spoken word poet I admire talked on her podcast about doing TAW and how great it was for her. Right, said I, I’m finally getting that book off the shelf and reading it. And for about 10 weeks I had a good momentum with it, I was doing my morning pages and artists dates and weekly check ins, but then around week 11 I just lost the will to carry on. I have, after about 2 additional months, crawled to finishing this book, but it’s safe to say I won’t be continuing with the morning pages. I might do the occasional artist’s date as I can see the benefit in it, I mean I can see the benefits in the morning pages too but who has time? The thing that lost me most I think was just how much Julia Cameron shoves God down the throats of the reader. Despite it saying on the book’s cover that it is a spiritual path to higher creativity, I just wasn’t expecting it to be THAT godly. It’s too much for this Agnostic woman to take. And so I’m afraid I would only recommend TAW if you are both spiritual/religious AND looking for ways to be more creative. If you’re atheist or agnostic and creative, chances are this book won’t be for you.