Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity

This book, written by Julia Cameron in 2002 and still going strong, has found a place on my "Recommended for New and Renewing Writers" list. It took me a while to place it there and its inclusion does worry me somewhat.

I'm one of the last people to emerge enthusiastic about the general notion of 'writing is the universe flowing through your fingers.' And, even more so, with another hat on, I have had to endure the overwhelming popularity of people like Napoleon Hill -- Think and Grow Rich --  who had gas station supervisors buying new suits to represent the success that surely awaited them just around the corner. Personally, I am more of the Thoreau bias: "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

Still, the book was recommended to me by a fellow writer whom I admire, had begun to follow its specific daily program, and reported increased liberating creative results from doing so. 

So, I'm reading the book. And, while I have not followed the daily program (others have wagged their finger at me for this felony), I have noted a number of things that have lifted my spirit and exorcised certain devils.

Sometimes, it's as though Julia Cameron is talking right to me. 

So, I place it on my list of Recommend's.