The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Best-selling author Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity is formulated as a 12-week course for blocked creatives and shadow artists—those who are drawn to art but do not believe they are artists themselves-—to recover from the challenges they’ve faced and build an authentically creative life. Cameron argues creativity is a spiritual practice and places heavy emphasis on the process and play rather than the product and work. Each week focuses on recovering a different core aspect through candid analysis of common issues, anecdotes from different creatives, exercises to examine and implement these strategies, and check-ins to see how the course is going. By the end of the course, Cameron wants creatives to feel empowered and see life as a creative process. This guide refers to the 25th Anniversary Edition published in 2016 by TarcherPerigee, a Penguin Random House imprint.

Content Warning: This book discusses psychological themes and contains some anecdotes on and analogies to disordered eating, substance abuse, and suicide.

Summary

The opening sections focus on establishing Julia Cameron’s credibility as an author and her experiences with the creative process. This section also outlines the definitions of key terms, the tools needed to complete the course, and what’s expected of the reader.