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A review by kingabee
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
2.0
Given the praise by so many artists I like and admire I expected so much more from this book. However, once you go past the useful ideas of morning pages and artist dates, you just end up with a white privileged woman’s interpretation of monotheistic religion in a Judaeo-Christian vein with a thin veneer of 90s New Age and pop-psychology.
Even though she insists the book can be used by atheists as successfully (as long as they accept the existence of higher power which lol) I honestly don’t see how. The whole thing is modelled after the 12 step program which is problematic in itself but that’s a story for another time.
This was not for me because it felt like more than half the book talked about getting rid of the doubters and toxic people in your life. I genuinely don’t have such people in my life. All my friends and family are extremely supportive and believe in me more than I believe in myself and push me to put myself out there.
I am my own worst enemy and Cameron gets to that (around chapter 8 I believe) but by that point I’d read a chapter about how you won’t be a starving artist because god will give you money as god loves artists and also likes to reward people with money, so I’m pretty much done with this book at that point.
There is also a ton of bullshit about how universe will provide if you just want something and show up. This is all in vein of The Alchemist and The Secret and all other absurd nonsense, including Jung’s synchronicity.
In general this was so violently at odds with my whole worldview it was difficult to weed out the useful tidbits from it.
But I guess my worthwhile takeaway would be: show up, put yourself out there, make time and space to be creative and don’t marry that with “productivity”, because creativity needs rest and playtime to flourish. So in the end I gave this book merciful 2 stars.
Even though she insists the book can be used by atheists as successfully (as long as they accept the existence of higher power which lol) I honestly don’t see how. The whole thing is modelled after the 12 step program which is problematic in itself but that’s a story for another time.
This was not for me because it felt like more than half the book talked about getting rid of the doubters and toxic people in your life. I genuinely don’t have such people in my life. All my friends and family are extremely supportive and believe in me more than I believe in myself and push me to put myself out there.
I am my own worst enemy and Cameron gets to that (around chapter 8 I believe) but by that point I’d read a chapter about how you won’t be a starving artist because god will give you money as god loves artists and also likes to reward people with money, so I’m pretty much done with this book at that point.
There is also a ton of bullshit about how universe will provide if you just want something and show up. This is all in vein of The Alchemist and The Secret and all other absurd nonsense, including Jung’s synchronicity.
In general this was so violently at odds with my whole worldview it was difficult to weed out the useful tidbits from it.
But I guess my worthwhile takeaway would be: show up, put yourself out there, make time and space to be creative and don’t marry that with “productivity”, because creativity needs rest and playtime to flourish. So in the end I gave this book merciful 2 stars.