Five years ago, fresh out of school, I eagerly dove into The Artist’s Way, embracing the weekly tasks with enthusiasm, filling pages with morning reflections and embarking on solo artist dates. But by week three, momentum stalled.
Perhaps it was the daunting “homework” or the religious undertones that didn’t quite resonate. Over the years, I’d sporadically return to the practice of morning pages, what Julia Cameron calls the “primary tool for creative recovery.”
This year began with challenges, prompting a renewed commitment to the daily brain dump. During an afternoon by the pool, a friend’s copy of The Artist’s Way beckoned. Phrases like “get out of the way, let it work through you” and “you have to stop telling yourself it’s too late” resonated deeply, offering solace during a period of feeling stuck.
It was time for a fresh start. A new sublet in Melbourne provided the perfect environment to cultivate new habits. A second-hand bookstore yielded a well-loved copy of the book. The owner, with a knowing tap on the cover, declared, “Now this, this will change your life.” That evening, I started anew, viewing the exercises as foundational for a new routine, and replacing the religious language with terms like “flow” and “energy.”
Twelve weeks, a dozen artist dates, and three journals filled with morning pages later, I closed the final page of The Artist’s Way in New York City.
I’m transformed, yet fundamentally the same. This, to me, is the beauty of it – change is rarely perfect; it’s often two steps forward, one step back, and sometimes the reverse. Lasting change is subtle, a merging of the old and new selves, strolling and stumbling together.
I discovered insights that can only be found through introspection, even when it appears like you’re doing nothing on the outside.
Here are my week-by-week observations and insights – from self-listening to reframing past opportunities – from the book I highly recommend to anyone feeling creatively blocked.
Lessons Learned from Completing The Artist’s Way
Week 1: Progress Over Perfection
My first attempt at The Artist’s Way sparked the idea for my passion project, Extraordinary Routines. This second attempt occurs exactly five years after the first interview was published in 2014.
Many of this week’s lessons echo what I’ve learned from conversations with creatives and my own principles: creativity thrives on support, and the key is persistent experimentation.
I’m struck by the concept of “shadow artists” – those drawn to artists but blocked themselves, “caught between the dream of action and the fear of failure.”
For five years, I’ve studied the creative processes of others, yet I haven’t written that book or launched that podcast I envisioned. Dwelling on this point leads to a spiral.
“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 the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the torch.”
While I’ve demonstrated audacity in some areas, like launching an event series and freelance writing, I see how a lack of it has stalled other projects.
I haven’t been bold enough – a belief, not a fact. “We are the thinker of the thoughts, not the thoughts,” as Julia writes.
We can fall into either/or thinking, hindering our progress towards unblocking. “Nurturing is key. To recover, we need solitude, self-nurturing, self-intimacy.”
I retreat to Readings bookshop, savoring the solitude and self-intimacy of browsing and contemplating ideas.
Heeding Julia’s words, “progress not perfection,” I outline my podcast timeline and solicit test listeners on Instagram. Taking action feels empowering.
Week 2: Recognizing People as Potential Blocks
This week brought feelings of envy, self-doubt, and missed opportunities. “Erratic is part of getting unstuck,” Julia writes. “Do not let self-doubt turn into self-sabotage.”
Unblocking often brings significant changes, revealing how our personal lives can reflect our stuckness. We may attach ourselves to “crazymakers,” people we subconsciously choose to hinder our creative desires. It’s easier to fixate on a heartbreak or workplace annoyance than to confront our creative potential.
This week, I entertained a “crazymaker,” fueling “what if” scenarios while my book proposal gathered dust. The door closed abruptly later that week, ending this romantic obsession as I read this very chapter. The book describes this as synchronicity, a sign of unblocking. This alignment between the chapters and my life recurred throughout my reading.
The day after the second ending with my “crazymaker,” I fell ill – a Kriya, “the bad case of the flu right after you’ve broken up with your love. It’s the rotten head cold and bronchial cough that announces you’ve abused your health to meet an unreachable work deadline.”
The fantasy of what could have been is gone, replaced by autonomy and the capacity to focus on something delightful, something I truly connect with – perhaps even that book proposal.
“The quality of life is in proportion, always to the capacity for delight,” writes Julia. “In the exact now, we are all, always, alright.”
Week 3: Utilizing Anger and Jealousy as a Roadmap
When feeling like you’re regressing, remember that growth is often uneven. We take one step forward and two steps back, and that’s perfectly acceptable. Self-love, not judgment, is the key to transformation.
Emotions like anger, while seemingly negative, can serve as a roadmap. “It tells us we can’t get away with our old life any longer. It tells us that old life is dying,” writes Julia.
Channeling anger can empower us to say no, speak up, or create in response to what stirs within us – it’s an invitation to act.
It also points us towards our desires. As Julia Cameron writes, “the how follows the what.” We need only state our intentions and take action. “Action has magic so simply begin,” writes Julia.
This week, I recorded my first podcast interview and prepared a pitch deck for a podcast producer.
Week 4: “If you want to work on your art, work on your life” – Anton Chekov
To break free from a creative rut, we must acknowledge and address the neglect of our most important work. We can no longer tolerate distractions, interruptions, or being driven by someone else’s agenda.
This week was about discarding the old and unworkable and recognizing shifts in tastes, judgments, and personal identity. I found myself leaving a talk I wasn’t enjoying, something I wouldn’t have done previously out of politeness.
I surprised myself with my actions and responses, signaling a departure from the habits that keep us stuck.
“You are no longer stuck but you cannot tell where you are going,” writes Julia.
Week 5: Opening Up to New Opportunities
Often, doubt stems from not taking ourselves seriously enough, writes Julia. However, I find that taking myself too seriously can also be a barrier.
I tend to categorize things as “impossible,” but this week highlighted that impossibility often arises from looking too far ahead or too narrowly at our desires.
“Very often, when we cannot seem to find an adequate supply it is because we are insisting on a particular human source of supply,” writes Julia.
When I asked myself what steps I was avoiding, I realized I needed to decide about a trip to New York City I’d been planning all year. Money, timing, and fear stood in my way, but the next step was to decide, so I booked the flight.
“Find the river and say yes to the flow,” writes Julia, and so the river will be NYC.
Like the bends in a river, progress isn’t linear. But the crucial element is to gain internal clarity regarding dreams, desires, and delights.
Uncovering these remains a work in progress, but this week’s readings taught me that I need time, space, and quiet to achieve clarity. This often means saying no to others or to our own rigid expectations.
Saying no can be challenging, especially to loved ones, but it’s an essential practice. “Many recovering creatives sabotage themselves most frequently by making nice,” as Julia writes.
We must protect our solitude and flow while unblocking. “We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be un-selfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone. When we can’t get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others, we may look like we’re there. We may act like we’re there. But our true self has gone to ground.”
Week 6: Confronting Money Anxiety and Wasted Time
This week, I committed to writing a short article daily to test the concept of prioritizing quantity and allowing an external force to manage quality.
Each writing session revealed internal objections and negative beliefs. A recurring thought was “I should be working” – even though I was writing, it didn’t feel like work because it wasn’t paid work.
Writing for my own contentment didn’t feel sufficient; there had to be an external recipient of the words.
“What we really want to do is what we are meant to do,” writes Julia. Why do I so often deny myself the luxury of pursuing my passions?
Often, money anxiety is the culprit. Shame and guilt over earning less than my peers erode my spare time, even when I have the time, space, and quiet to write.
While I may earn comparatively less, our needs are subjective, and I’m privileged to cover my living expenses. As Julia writes, we “deny ourselves the luxury of time” – money anxiety is the excuse I use to waste my free time.
Week 7: Recognizing and Resisting Perfectionism
While I enjoy lists, I can also be trapped by them. “Art is about getting something down, not planning,” writes Julia.
For me, planning often stems from perfectionism, which we often misunderstand. “Perfectionism is not a quest for the best, but a pursuit of the worst in ourselves.”
This week, my artist date was attending The Moth storytelling event solo. I was awestruck by the strangers who bravely shared their stories with no notes and full hearts. They were funny, touching, imperfect, and embodied the chapter’s question: “What would you do if you didn’t have to do it perfectly?”
We often wait for the perfect time, conditions, or state, believing it will guarantee success and security. However, as the book explains, “safety is a very expensive illusion.”
Waiting for perfection can breed jealousy and envy, where we see others doing what we know we can but have relegated to a dream. As Julia Cameron writes, “Blocked artists deny success from ourselves and others.”
The antidote is to take risks and focus on the doing. “A risk is worth taking simply for the sake of taking it.”
I open the test podcast and stumble through editing software I’ve never used. I deem it bad, unusable, and un-shareable – my perfectionism still has a long way to go.
Week 8: Understanding that Real Change Happens in Tiny Increments
This chapter was the most transformative for me, and I continue to revisit it. It will take time to fully internalize its lessons.
As mentioned, I initially viewed a lack of audacity as personal failure, but perhaps it’s more accurate to say that criticism erodes our audacity reserves.
Throughout the creative process, Julia explains, artists face losses of hope, money, and self-belief. Encouragement, especially from ourselves, is crucial for recovery.
With encouragement, we can reframe loss, rejection, and criticism.
“Every loss must be framed as a potential gain, every end a beginning,” writes Julia.
This week, I learned that my book agent was moving companies and could no longer represent me. I also received news that my regular newspaper column would be discontinued. Other freelance opportunities seemed to be waning. I felt like I had lost everything I’d built over the past few years in one fell swoop.
Julia’s words were timely: “Stop complaining about the lousy curves you get thrown and stretch, reach for what you really want.”
Instead of asking “why me,” I needed to ask “what next.” I needed to recognize the potential in these endings – a fresh start, a shake-up of my routine, and a push from complacency.
“Creativity is in the doing, not the done,” writes Julia.
I often focus on the “done” – the book deal, the published columns, the praised podcast launch. I had ignored the “doing” – the writing, recording, and learning that all these dream projects entailed. I skipped over process and progress, straight into perfection.
“Focused on process, our creative life creates a sense of adventure,” writes Julia.
Instead of thinking about the big goal, I needed to focus on the next small step and replace “what’s the use” with “what is next.”
“Most of the time, the next right thing to do is small: washing out your paintbrushes, stopping by the art-supply store and getting your clay, checking the local paper for a list of acting classes… as a rule of thumb, it is best to just admit that there is always one action you can take for your creativity daily. This daily-action commitment fills the form.”
Our minds can deceive us, causing anxiety over the big steps instead of taking small ones. “One of our favourite things to do – instead of art – is to contemplate the odds,” writes Julia.
This is anxiety in lieu of action. “Watch yourself for a week and notice the way you will pick up an anxious thought, almost like a joint, to blow off or at least delay, your next creative action.”
I do this constantly – worrying about the big project instead of pausing to take a small step. I recognize my addiction when I read Julia’s words: “Most blocked creatives have an active addiction to anxiety. We prefer the low-grade pain and occasional heart-stopping panic attack to the drudgery of small and simple daily steps in the right direction.”
Logging my anxious thoughts for one day helped me stay focused on redoing my chapter outline for the book.
Work begets work, and taking small steps in action instead of indulging in big questions can propel us forward.
Week 9: Differentiating Fear from Laziness
I often joke that I’m a lazy overachiever, but this week’s chapter made me question both. “Blocked artists are not lazy, they are blocked,” writes Julia.
We expend energy on self-doubt, self-hatred, regret, grief, and jealousy, framing tasks as huge, scary, and impossible.
My high expectations and ambitious plans often lead me to skip the small steps and dive into the impossible tasks. “The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce at all,” she writes.
We may also ask “what’s the point,” berate ourselves for starting late, and worry about never catching up.
When I fail to succeed or finish my to-do list, I attribute it to laziness, ignoring the fact that I set myself up for failure, perhaps out of self-protection or sabotage.
“Do not call the inability to start laziness, call it fear,” writes Julia.
This fear can manifest as a “Creative U-Turn,” and seeking help is best when stuck. “The glare of success can send the recovering artist scurrying back into the cave of self-defeat.”
To combat fear, we need love – not pushing or hustling, but leading from joy, not duty.
When we start with joy, discipline follows. The question resurfaces – what do I enjoy? What do I desire? Why does this continue to elude me? This week felt like a lot of questions and meetings, but no steps taken. Am I searching for joy?
Week 10: Recognizing the Difference Between Overwork and Zestful Work
“When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain,” writes Julia.
I still lack clarity on my path. Am I writing a book? Building a freelance career? Creating a podcast? Growing an event series? I spend considerable time thinking about doing these things but have no idea what I’m doing overall. Do people actually know the answer to this?
I’ve removed blocks, notably alcohol, after seeing its negative impact on my daily habits, and haven’t had a drink for almost five months at this point in the book.
I interpret this as a sign of unblocking. “When we become unblocked, we will experience a withdrawal from our old life and what has kept us stuck – habits, workholism, relationships, addictions. We find that we are able to articulate our own boundaries and desires and become less malleability to the whims of others,” writes Julia.
Even without alcohol, there’s still room for improvement in my time management, as I often become a busy worker bee, overwhelmed or worried about money, rather than attending to creative work.
As Julia writes, “It is more likely that you have the time and are misspending it.”
I don’t feel particularly busy, but overwhelmed by a lack of zestful work. I know what I need to do but feel stuck, unable to move forward. As Julia puts it, I’m in a creative drought.
What do we do in a drought? We persevere because “the time in the desert brings us clarity.”
Sometimes, our expectations create the drought. We must be wary of delusions like fame and external validation, which are shortcuts to self-approval. “The desire to be better than can choke off the desire to be,” writes Julia.
We must return to the process of creating itself, not the outcome, because “wanting more will always snap at our heels, erode our joy at ours or another’s accomplishments.”
Once again, it’s about joy. “Only when we are being joyful creative can we release the obsession with others and how they are doing.”
Week 11: Understanding The True Purpose of Exercise
A recurring theme has been the importance of experimenting with what works for you.
For me, that’s meant abstaining from alcohol, diligently completing morning pages, embarking on artist dates, and running.
Initially, I could barely run for five minutes on a treadmill. By week eight, I reached my goal of running 5km without stopping. Persistence can yield results. I achieved my goal and continue to run for clarity, focus, and steadiness.
“We learn by going where we have to go. Exercise is often the going that moves us from stagnation to inspiration, from problem to solution, from self-pity to self-respect. We learn we are stronger than we thought. We learn to look at things with a new perspective. We learn to solve our problems by tapping our own inner resources and listening for inspiration, not only from others but from ourselves. Seemingly without effort, our answers come while we swim or strike or ride or run. By definition, this is one of the fruits of exercise: the act of bringing into play or realising in action,” writes Julia.
Exercise teaches us the rewards of the process, not just the outcome.
As Julia writes, “Any regular, repeatable action primes the well,” and for me, running puts me in sync with myself.
Each time I commit to and take action on running, I build self-respect, which comes from doing the work.
I’ve also learned that the goal isn’t the point; it’s the running. Reaching 5km didn’t make the treadmill disappear – the opportunity to continue running remained.
“When we get ‘there’, there disappears” writes Julia, so we may as well focus on the running, not the end.
Week 12: The Art of Letting Go
It’s the final chapter, and I’ve arrived in New York City with the intention of dedicating three months to my personal projects – the podcast and the book.
I expect to immediately hit the ground running, but a familiar voice tells me this was a mistake, that I can’t afford to be here, that I’ve taken a wrong turn and should focus on finding a real job.
“We throw up roadblocks to maintain a sense of control,” writes Julia. Instead of grasping for time, I need to take myself less seriously.
“To be creative is to be productive – but by cooperating with creating, not by forcing it.”
Gentleness and trust in the unknown are what I’m truly here to learn. The twelve weeks have led me to this point, and I change my phone background to say “let go.”
Cooperating with our creativity takes time, and we must remember that we can grieve for our old life as we sense change. Something new is unfolding, even if I don’t yet know what it is, and that’s okay. In fact, it’s extraordinary.
Where to Go From Here? Reflections on the Elusiveness of Delight and Desire
Three weeks have passed since I finished The Artist’s Way. I’ve maintained the habit of morning pages, taken myself on artist dates in New York City, and continue to explore what delights and brings joy. In truth, I’m still unsure – I often feel like I’m in a creative desert, even in the most creatively vibrant city in the world.
I want to be attuned to delight, to joy, to pay attention, to experiment, and see if Julia Cameron’s message holds true.
“The quality of life is in proportion, always to the capacity for delight.” “Become internally clear on dreams, desires and delights.” “When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain.” “What we really want to do is what we are meant to do” “Only when we are being joyfully creative can we release the obsession with others and how they are doing.”
It’s interesting to finish a book repeatedly touted as life-changing and not feel drastically different. My book proposal is still being reworked, the podcast is still in the pipeline, and I’m still uncertain about what truly delights me.
The difference is that I’m committed to being okay with what isn’t finished, because things take time. I think that’s the beauty in finally being open to incremental change, to know that letting go of old habits and ways of thinking takes time, and that things don’t pay off in a linear fashion, and there is often a plateau after any big internal shift.
