A Writer Recommends: The Artist's Way

It may go without saying that I have been away from social media and posting about my books for a while. Basically, for the last year since the Swan Bride came out. I still was writing, but for whatever reason, it just wasn’t as fun as it used to be. It was slow and honestly a bit discouraging, so I let myself get pulled away by other goals—making it even slower.

I kept missing my usual word-count numbers and even had to cancel a preorder I posted last year, knowing that I would never be able to meet the deadline at my current speed.

I even questioned if I still wanted to BE an author. I mean, I could just be in a different stage of life right now, and over twenty published books could be enough, right?

However, I think that I am slowly regaining my spark. Partly because I have completed some of the personal goals I referenced earlier (I might go into more detail about them later on), and partly because I have been adopting the suggestions of a few creativity boosting books I have been reading.

I want to start sharing some of that process with you, and the first book I want to highlight is the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

I have heard about this book before but had been reluctant to read it—believing it might be too dry and general in its advice to “all artists.” And yes, some of the advice CAN get a little repetitive, but I got through it and have seen a lot of improvement in both my writing and my general sense of wellbeing just by implementing two core practices I wanted to share.

Morning Pages: This is basically freewriting three pages every morning as a focused stream of conscious meditation. So, you write whatever comes to mind, no matter how random or unorganized or repetitive the words can be. Affirmations, patterns of thoughts, problems you want to work out, conversations you want to have, to-do lists, even “I don’t know what to write” over and over again until something else comes up.

These pages aren’t meant to be shared with anyone, just serving as a warmup to get the creative juices flowing before you begin the “real” tasks of the day.

Weekly Artist Dates: These are weekly activities of about two hours where you do something that your “inner artist/child” enjoys. It can be something you want to learn “just for fun,” working on a low-pressure creative project (not something you wish to monetize or are necessarily very “good” at), going on a meditative walk or site-seeing adventure, etc.

I can go into more detail about what my personal “morning pages” and “artist dates” have looked like later, but for now, I will just say that I have done these two things consistently for the last few weeks and have been amazed. Suddenly, I am full of ideas for the books I have been working on and have hit my writing word-count numbers every week without having to force myself to sit down and “get to work.”

So, if anyone is in a creative slump, I would highly recommend this book, and I will be posting more details about my current work in progress soon! I'm also curious . . . have any of you read this book before? What do you do when you're in a creative slump? Let me know!