Some Valuable Tips From the Artists' Way.

byalisterbrede

433 followers

Updated 5 years ago

In the early 1990s Julia Cameron collaborated with Mark Bryan to produce a remarkable self-help book "The Artists' Way".

This was 12 week interactive program designed to awaken blocked or latent creativity. Many found the solo-approach to the twelve weekly steps difficult to follow. Instead of embracing the daunting task of tackling the lessons alone they plumped for interactive groups which made the program more doable and a lot more fun. To meet the demand facilitated groups sprang up all over the place.

I stumbled across "The Artists' Way" a few years after the first publication.

Yes, the book performed as advertised.

As a result I took up the wondrously calming hobby of painting. At one stage I gave away my paintings as Christmas and Birthday presents. Sadly, these days my painting is neglected as I find WA taking up huge chunks of my time.

This painting for fun was a new route for me.

My mother was a moderately successful artist. I grew up with daily visits to her studio but the creative bug never bit me

Yes, we had Art classes at school, but the whole thing felt stylised and false and not any fun. Besides, I was deemed to be academic and my elders and betters decided "Art" was a waste of time for those destined for the lofty halls of Academia. If consulted I might have plumped for a draughty Gauginesque attic instead. Living in Paris, drinking Absinthe and dancing far into the night sounded much more fun than the dreary halls of an University.

The explosive unblocking of creativity that came as a result of Julia Cameron's awesome book caused my repressed psyche to literally explode.

I was so impressed with this. I became a facilitator myself.

I followed on by leading a couple of groups through the three-month Course. I tried to generate some interest in "The Artists' Way" when I moved to Koh Samui in 2007, but my effort fell on deaf ears at the that time. Maybe now is a good time to revive those efforts. Yet, this post has a point. It's not a nostalgic wander through time extolling the virtues of Julia Cameron's book. Aside from the 12 weekly lessons; the course has two most precious tools. I think one of them might be helpful to the Writers and Bloggers of WA. This tool she called "Morning Pages". They ask you to write 3 pages of "whatever you like" in a notebook every morning for the 3-month duration of the Course. After 12 weeks this entrenches itself as a habit.

In my opinion this is a hugely useful daily exercise. Sit down with your notebook and start to write. At first that looks daunting but soon the creative juices begin to flow. The pages then fill quickly with writing. I have written this post using that very same technique. The writing has been easy, quick, relatively effortless and hopefully of reasonable quality.

I recommend you try this if you find yourself getting stuck in producing content for your website. It should speed up production and have you writing content with relative ease.
"The Artists' Way" was first published in 1992. That's twenty-seven years ago! Where has time gone? Back then mobile phones were the size of bricks and laptop computers ran on floppy discs. It was a time when we wrote things down on paper in longhand.

• Get a notebook that you like. Paper quality is important.
• Set aside time every morning to write 3 pages of "stream of consciousness"material.
• Do this every day and see how it eases up the flow of your writing
• Let you Blog Posts come to light this way.

I have used that technique to write this post. Using more traditional methods I struggle to produce material, when it often takes me 5 or 6 hours to knock out a post . This has been a much easier experience. This article was born on 4 pages of my A4 notebook. Yes, I used longhand and then transposed it to cyber writing via my laptop. No, I didn't follow my longhand version slavishly.

Would be interested to read your thoughts on this.

Oh, the second tool is "The Artists' Date" For the 12 weeks of the course they ask you to go out and do something that you wouldn't normally do. You can go alone or with another person. To begin with I took myself to the movies on a Monday afternoon as that seemed a very daring thing to do. I then became more adventurous and started visiting museums and galleries.

These were places I had never been to over the years. I started doing this in other towns and cities. It was an invaluable experience.