The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

This book was published already in 1992, and has been a bestseller for many years. It is planned as a twelve-week program, and designed to help creators to finding their inner creative confidence, take away internal blocks - such as fear, perfectionism, and self-doubt, that I guess most creative people have.

The base for the exercises is “Morning pages” and “Artist Dates” and they repeat themselves over the weeks. Morning pages should be a stream of consciousness way of writing; free-flowing, unfiltered and often illogical. It should capture the writer’s immediate mental state, including ideas, shifts of focus etc. Don’t think of the grammatical structure, just write. This way of writing is typical for established authors like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. It is a sort of relief to get things down on paper. I must admit I have not been able to write every morning, but I try. The idea is to write three pages. I use an A5 notebook, but I think you are meant to have an A4. Anyway … the important thing is to write, and I quite enjoy it.

“The Artist Date” - is a block of time you set aside weekly to nurture your creativity. Two hours a week might be a good start, but I guess you can choose yourself. The idea is to do something creative - on your own - that inspire and promote your creativity. It could be going to an exhibition at a museum; playing the piano, trumpet, drums or whichever musical instrument you fancy; you could go to a café and read a book etc. It should qualify as quality time. This is something that I do rather often myself. You choose yourself, and you don’t have to take into consideration other people’s interests. Just concentrate on what you are doing at the time, and being inspired and hopefully it would lead to a creative output.

I have started with the first two weeks, but will have to stop for a month since I am going away. I was thinking I could do the morning papers anyway, but alas, the travelling has been too intensive so no time for that. I will probably start from the beginning once I am home again. I hope that after following this “course” I will be more directed towards the things I want do to, and achieve. And above all, not just start a lot of projects which are never finalised.

I also bought Julia Cameron’s book Write for Life, A toolkit for writers. I hope it will add something useful to my writing goals. The book is a six-week programme for writers of all levels.

What are your goals for 2026? Reading? Creating? Or just take life as it comes?