My history with Julia Cameron’s "The Artist’s Way"

I first tried the 12-week program in Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” in 2002.

I was not ready to change to the extent that the process was changing me, and in my resistance, I quit by week 6. I recognized how much it had helped me. I could tell how much I could potentially glean from the process, if I could carve out the time and space to really commit to it.

In 2004, I tried it again.

I have not stopped writing my 3 “Morning Pages” since that attempt. (I usually just call it journaling, and I’ve got 25 volumes of my Journals to show for it. But the original rules came from the AW Morning Pages.)

That time, I made it to week 8 before I knew I either needed to change my life forever, or stop the process.

I still wasn’t ready. But I kept writing Morning Pages. I kept thinking about the work I’d done, and I kept going to therapy. I started practicing Yoga. In 2005, I basically turned my entire life upside down.

In late 2005, early 2006, I finally finished all 12 weeks of “The Artist’s Way”.

Of all of the tasks, of all of the practices, the hardest tool for me to master was the Artist Date. I might have achieved a handful of them the first two times I tried the book’s exercises. I was great at weedling my way out of them, including other people along with me on them, and counting things as “Artist Dates” that certainly did not qualify.

By the time I finished the AW – the last time I tried it – I was living by myself, and living out a creative journey of joy and humor. Artist Dates has stopped being a chore and had grown into a habit…..

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