Is the Artist's Way worth doing?

Daily News for Curious Minds

Be the smartest person in the room by reading 1440! Dive into 1440, where 4 million Americans find their daily, fact-based news fix. We navigate through 100+ sources to deliver a comprehensive roundup from every corner of the internet – politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a quick, 5-minute newsletter. It's completely free and devoid of bias or political influence, ensuring you get the facts straight. Subscribe to 1440 today.

Sign up now!

Welcome to Creatives Anonymous, a weekly newsletter that explores what it means to be a modern-day creative. It inspires, encourages, and empowers readers to take back their creative power.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.

I can’t write a newsletter on creativity and not talk about the Artist’s Way.

For those unaware, the Artist’s Way is a book by Julia Cameron based on a 12-week program she’s taught her students. The book is described as a “self-help book to help people with artistic creative recovery, which teaches techniques and exercises to assist people in gaining self-confidence in harnessing their creative talents and skills.”

(If you’ve ever heard the phrases “morning pages” or “artist date,” this is where it comes from) 

The book was first published in 1992, but thanks to social media, it’s seen a resurgence over the last few years. 

I’ve done the Artist’s Way twice now—once back in 2020 and the other just recently. 

So would I recommend doing it? Yes. But with one caveat: 

You need to do the program as it was intended to be done to benefit the most from it.

That means writing morning pages every single day, going on an artist's date every single week, and completing at least five of the weekly tasks.  

There’s a reason it’s one of the most popular self-help creative recovery programs: it works. 

The Artist’s Way aims to heal your inner child, the part of yourself responsible for creativity, by allowing yourself to play, explore, and get curious. 

And to heal your inner child, you need to confront all the roadblocks that keep you from reaching your most creative selves: perfectionism, fear, shame, anger, etc.

The Artist’s Way also helps you see your creative dreams as dreams worth pursuing and allows you to rediscover your passions through play. It helps you set a foundation for creative living, an expanded sense of creativity in our businesses, with our children, our spouse, friends, etc. 

The program helps you turn off the inner critic and your logic brain in favor of your artist brain. It gives you a safe space to open yourself to insight, inspiration, and guidance by nurturing your inner artist. 

If you’ve been out of practice with your creativity, learning to let yourself create is like learning how to walk again. It’s awkward, embarrassing, and cringey.

And I think that’s why a lot of people don’t find value or stick with the program. 

We all want the silver bullet of how to be more creative, but we don’t want to put in the work to get there.

We have to be willing to confront our emotions and the hard truths about why we’re not living out our creativity, something a lot of us (especially those of us who lead with logic) don’t like to do. 

As much as we don’t want to, we have to accept that somewhere along the way, we’ve buried our creative dreams in favor of supporting the hopes and dreams of others.

We have to accept that we’ve been focused too much on earning the validation of others instead of believing in ourselves. 

We have to accept that we’re the ones who have been sabotaging our own creative pursuits.  

Simply put, this newsletter wouldn’t exist without going through the Artist’s Way. 

My propensity to take risks wouldn’t exist without the Artist’s Way. 

My tendency for curiosity wouldn’t exist without the Artist’s Way. 

The first time I went through the program, it made me more courageous in creating and putting my work out in the world. 

That’s why the one thing I’m better at than anything is to take imperfect action when sharing my writing and my creative work.

I still do morning pages every day 5 years later. I still go on regular artist dates. 

Going through the Artist’s Way has gotten me closer to my goal of living a more creative life. Looking back at my creativity journey over the last five years, it’s crazy how much more creativity I’ve incorporated into my life, from styling my clothes to cooking food.  

So needless to say, if you want to get over all the mental roadblocks (at the end of the day, it’s all a mental game) that prevent you from living a more creative life, the Artist’s Way is worth doing (I’ve also been seeing some chatter around the book Syllabus by Lynda Barry as an alternative. I ordered it from the library to compare it so stay tuned).  

We all have a relationship with our creativity; we just need to cultivate it. 

Creative Corner

• 🎞️ What I’m Consuming: S7 of Drive to Survive and With Love, Meghan

• 💡 What I’m Loving:

• 🎨 What I’m Working On: Nothing currently in my personal life, but a lot of content projects for work

• 💭 Weekly Musing:

Thank you 💕

If you liked this newsletter, I’d love it if you could forward it to someone who you think would like it, too!

I’m so grateful for all of your support!

Alexa Phillips is a writer, content strategist, and multi-passionate creative. She is the founder of Bright Eyes Creative, a creative studio helping founders & creatives build, grow, and launch brand media and content ecosystems that amplify their authority and grow their audiences beyond social media.

Where to find me:

• Learn more about my services 

• Listen to my recent podcast episodes.

• Subscribe to my other newsletter, The Underground, a weekly zine that teaches creative brand leaders to become tastemakers by creating unforgettable content that breaks through the noise and leaves a mark.

• Join Write Club, free weekly 90-minute co-writing sessions dedicated to helping you knock out all the content you have to write for your business.