Book Review: “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron
The title of this book is pretty misleading. Artists? No, this is a book for clearing your mind to excel as an entrepreneur, actor, car salesman, singer, any occupation where you must think for yourself. The running theme of this book is you cannot immerse yourself in your world if you don’t clear out the obstacles in the forest that is your mind. I say “forest,” because she refers to it as everything else. Frequently, Julia Cameron the author calls your persona “the inner child.”
“I am met by instant, defensive hostility: “But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play?”Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don’t.”
Who is Julia Cameron?
She is a former Mrs. Scorsese as in Martin, an accomplished woman in her own right. Did you ever watch the 1985 Miami Vice episode, “Junk Love?” She wrote it. Her spirit is felt in the endless numbers of hit shows, movies, songs, books and brands created around you from people who fell in love with this book and the journey it lead them on. You could say as the author of too many books for me to name, Ms. Cameron has changed the world indirectly by changing those who love her teachings.
What is in the book?
The Artist’s Way began as a teaching seminar. Its most famous lesson is every day, writing down the “morning papers,” an empty thought flow from your mind to the page, or your digital iPhone screen on your Notes app. There is no right or wrong way to adapt to morning papers. Make them evening papers if you chase after pre-school kids all day long. The important part is you release yourself from your mind’s limitations. Note the recurring themes in your pages. What is holding you back? Is there a business idea or script plot lurking in there? No one knows what is in your morning papers, so you are freed to reveal all. Do not share them.
Getting the full value of a career transformation doesn’t happen with morning papers alone. You go through a near therapy workshop on a road taken by many method actors completing this at home workshop. Ms. Cameron overcame personal addiction and boldly created a strategy to help other people who feel stuck in life. I’m very happy for this because creativity for business, and yes loop Hollywood into it because show business is business, gets tied with, “You need to be on substances to find the right inspiration.” No, you don’t. “You need to be cuckoo crazy to write good music/films. Most people are weird!” No, a prerequisite of insanity is a myth.
“I began teaching the creativity workshops in New York. I taught them because I was told to teach them. One minute I was walking in the West Village on a cobblestone street with beautiful “afternoon light. The next minute I suddenly knew that I should begin teaching people, groups of people, how to unblock. Maybe it was a wish exhaled on somebody else’s walk. Certainly Greenwich Village must contain a greater density of artists—blocked and otherwise—than nearly anyplace else in America.
“I need to unblock,” someone may have breathed out.
“I know how to do it,” I may have responded, picking up the cue. My life has always included strong internal directives. Marching orders, I call them.In any case, I suddenly knew that I did know how to unblock people and that I was meant to do so, starting then and there with the lessons I myself had learned.”
Great coincidences have happened to me like that. Not often, not all day long. No, not like that.
I know she is telling the truth about a calling to teach out of nowhere because before I read this book, in June 2022 weeks before my 35th birthday, some knowledge came to me as if I knew it for no reason. I had spent my life imagining myself as a composer-director with composer always leading first, but my purpose is to be a composer-actress who directs and writes films, my acting in front of the camera being a very important part of who I am.
The basis of The Artist’s Way is getting your true self out to be a working creative professional. Maybe you’re like me, winding up in a day job where you are undervalued for the first years of your career pushed on by others, not much going on for it either. You could be a stay at home mom or a young fellow feeling lost. Get back at it, emptying your mind.
“Shadow artists often choose shadow careers—those close to the desired art, even parallel to it, but not the art itself. Noting their venom, François Truffaut contended that critics were themselves blocked directors, as he had been when he was a critic. He may be right. Intended fiction writers often go into newspapering or advertising, where they can use their gift without taking the plunge into their dreamed-of fiction-writing career.”
What appeals to me about this book as opposed to therapy for method acting / business creativity flourishing is no one knows your innermost thoughts. You follow along with the lessons and always end with questions that you answer. You may find that whenever you refer back to this book, your answers differ. That’s OK. Great, possibly! You will cry so much the first time you get this done because it will take you way back to your childhood and youthful years of teens and early 20’s. My paying a therapist to listen to me would not come off with this same reaction. A $10 workshop book you can work with again or expensive therapy that doesn’t do anything and may lead me into getting bad advice? Hmmm, which could be the better choice? :) A sizeable portion of the book is what I might call “therapy specific to the Hollywood crowd” as you will not get gimmicky answers and therapy you don’t relate to. A regular therapist might tell you to give up on this and go be an attorney. Ms. Cameron’s book would take that anger into your venting in morning pages until a decade from now, you’re a lawyer to high power entertainment companies writing hit legal dramas on the side. Perspective is everything.
The section on “fame” really related to me. She views it as recognition for your work and the “why him, not me?” question everyone around me has. Businessmen/businesswomen are not immune to this thinking hitting all of us. For me, I don’t view it as a form of jealousy because I am happy for someone’s success. If anything, my “why not me?” is pounding on myself for not being great enough today to make whatever it is happen.
Ms. Cameron reminds us that a door closing might be your destiny’s route into something better for you.
Artist Dates
Ms. Cameron wants you out of the house doing something every week: see a new movie, read a good library book, sniff the flowers on a walk, go do something affordable, anything. I happen to believe artist dates can be done at home. You can learn more about them in the book. I do artist dates my own way. With these times, you can adapt the book into doing no/low budget artist dates like, as said, the library, or renting a movie and splitting the cost with other people.
Media, and For Some of You Social Media, Abstinence
Avoiding media was/is the best part of this book for me. When you step away from that outside sound of flies buzzing in your ear into the quietness of your mind, you are ready to do big things. You can think for yourself and have a look around your inner thoughts. Getting to work on what you really want to do is exactly what I always wanted. I now really am serious about blocking out the outside world on some days because of the book.
A Life Changing Experience
My review is trying not to reveal too much because I want you to read this book and follow up on everything it tells you. When I write my morning pages, they’ve inspired me to do things I never imagined myself doing. To change my life, how I market my career, pursuing opportunities that popped into my mind, and so much. Please take this course: The Artist’s Way to me isn’t Eat, Pray, Love as everyone on the web makes it look. This is a bunch of amazing psychology hidden in a beautifully told at home workshop you can follow along with.
Getting Something Out of the Way
The criticism this book always gets from the more outspoken kinds of atheists is, “Julia Cameron mentions God a lot! I am an atheist!” This book is so non-denominational, not Christian or any religious affiliation beyond saying there is an existence of whatever you want to call something or someone greater than humanity: nature, science, a superior being, God. The higher power belief areas are a tiny suggestion to guide you on your way. Personally, I believe you should believe in some connection between all of this. Actual scientists believe a physics theory that what happens in space affects the gravitational pull on every action we complete here on Earth. If you can’t find beauty and correlations in any kind of scientific beliefs, what is worth living for?
