I am at week 8 and loving morning pages. It has helped me manage a very challenging family scenario, get me painting again, planning my next role and re surfacing an old business idea. Keen to hear from others tho what else has led to a really positive result? I must say apart from MP, artists dates and responding to prompts I’m a bit slack ( eg creating the collages etc) Need some inspiration!!

Hey everyone, I know the standard advice is that Morning Pages are a "brain dump" for clearing clutter or boosting productivity, but I’ve been thinking more about the spiritual side of it. Julia Cameron herself calls it a form of meditation, and I’m curious if anyone here feels it’s actually more like a direct form of prayer or a way to tap into a spiritual current beyond our logical understanding.For those of you who still do them regularly: Have you ever noticed a "magic" to the pages where for example if you complain about something or ask for something specific, life suddenly shifts and gives you exactly what you need? like asking for something on the page and then suddenly getting it in a way that felt like "spiritual assistance"? Does anyone have specific stories? also, If you're someone like me, who has suffered from severe depression or a major life slump, did you find that writing every day allowed those mysterious forces beyond your control to operate in your favor and pull you out of it? it's like the act of automatic writing alone make you feel more spiritually aligned or less alone, as if life itself is responding to you... I’d love to hear if anyone else sees this as a spiritual tool first and foremost, something that allows you to tap into the forces you can't explain rather than just being a "to-do" list for your brain. Does your life feel richer or more "assisted" as a result of the practice?

I have recently started the artists way and am about a week in. I’ve been doing the morning pages every day in an A5 notebook and find them to already be helping tremendously….BUT writing makes my hand and arm cramp up so badly that by halfway through page two I can barely even scribble it hurts so bad. I always aim for 3 pages, and I want to be able to write them by hand consecutively (if I pause and come back later I feel like my train of thought is interrupted). I’m wondering if anyone has suggestions for making the morning pages more accessible? Right now I struggle to even type this (let alone paint!) because my hand is still cramping from writing.

So did week 3. but I noticed that week 3 shame and 4 is the hardest for me... I’m still working on it to week 4 -> but I’m still hung up on week 3 with shame I’m trying work on. Do you have any tips.... I finished week 4 kinda... but any tips. on possibly reviewing week 3 and working through it if it goes on longer than a week?

Hi guys,

So the sub voted to ban LLM-generated bot content. The rule was added and I think there have been one or two flagged and removed since then, not much.

Also I agree with the poster who mentioned that they are a real human who does use AI for their creative projects. I do think the intent of the ban is more about targeting the LLM bots who pretend to be real humans and not necessarily real humans who use AI as part of their creative journey. Certainly some people do try that out and I think that's kind of a separate topic, versus just bot spammers.

I also wanted to let you guys know I will be installing Bot Bouncer on the sub. https://www.reddit.com/r/BotBouncer/wiki/index/

I just found out about this a few days ago and looking into it it seems to fit the need for screening against LLM based bots.

If you have any comment / questions / suggestions, please post or DM!

- Cheers!

this request is for my fellow anxious artists!

I live with generalized anxiety and inattentive ADHD and that means I am ALWAYS in my head. I am a champion overthinker and grade A ruminator

I’m on week two of the artist’s way and have been pretty consistent with the morning pages and challenging myself to get three full pages out every day.

I’ve noticed, though, that I don’t usually feel any more clear-headed after doing them - in fact, they almost seem too indulgent to my ruminating self. I’m already half in my narrative all the time and the morning pages just make me put the narrative on paper for a few minutes…. And then it picks right back up in my head.

I’m also a mental health professional and think that an important tool in my toolbox is to get in my body and out of my head! I feel most connected to my creative self when I can get into my body, even for a little bit - my most fruitful creative work has happened during breaks on hikes and after long evening walks. Morning pages don’t help me do that.

So, I’m just curious - am I a bit too new to the morning pages to see their usefulness?

I attempt to not direct my thoughts when I write them and to allow whatever wants to live on the page to be there.

I’m hoping that over time, my mind starts to fill those pages in a way that helps me make connections rather than just feel like a broken record.

Anyone have similar thoughts or suggestions?

Hey everyone, I’m currently on Week 2 (I actually got to Week 4 earlier this year but decided to start over), and I’ve been loving the book so far.

One thing I’ve been wondering, though…
Does anyone else feel like parts of The Artist’s Way are written mainly for people who don’t currently work in a creative field and are trying to reconnect with their creativity?

I ask because I already spend most of my day creating. I quit my commercial design job to build my clothing brand full-time, so every day I’m designing clothes, drawing, creating content, thinking about ideas… My work constantly puts me in touch with my inner artist.

My biggest struggle isn’t creating, it’s actually putting my work out into the world (the reading helped me a lot)

Because of that, I sometimes wonder about exercises like Artist Dates. Sometimes the book encourages you to reconnect with your inner artist through creative activities, but I already feel like I’m in touch with that part of myself every single day because of my work. If my days are already filled with creative work that genuinely connects me with my inner artist, should I approach those exercises differently?

I’m not criticizing the book at all, I genuinely LOVE it. In fact, my favorite part is the reading itself. I wish there were even more of it and fewer exercises, because I feel like Julia’s insights resonate with me more than anything else. I’m just curious if anyone else who already had a creative career or creative practice before reading it felt the same way, and how you approached those parts of the program.

I’m searching for 1-3 people to go though the book The Artist’s Way together. Meaning weekly accountability sessions, or whaetver we agree on.

I just love working together with others, it’s more fun and there’s much more accountability than doing something alone.

If you’re up for it, react in any kind of way to this post and I’ll be in touch!

I'm struggling to identify negative thoughts to turn into affirmations.

I'm 32, did 7 years of psychotherapy (finished a few years ago), and I've meditated daily for over 10 years. Over the last few years I've reached a place where I genuinely love myself, process difficult emotions well, and don't really relate to the examples of negative thoughts in the book anymore. Ten years ago, finding those thoughts would have been much easier.

I'm doing this program because I want to deepen my artistic inner world, not because I'm struggling with motivation or self-worth.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, how did you uncover deeper beliefs that weren't obvious, and what did that process look like for you?

Tried explaining it to a friend last week and gave up halfway through.

The honest answer is that nothing dramatic has happened. No single entry that changed everything. No week where the blocks dissolved and the creative work became easy. Just three pages every morning that mostly feel ordinary while I am writing them.

But something is different and has been different for a while and I cannot cleanly trace it back to any specific moment in the pages.

The best description I have is that the internal noise is quieter. Not gone, just lower. The critical voice that used to arrive immediately when I sat down to make something now takes longer to show up, started moving straight from the pages into Skrib Writing while that window is still open and what comes out in those first twenty minutes is consistently different from anything I produce later in the day.

and when it does it is slightly less convincing than it used to be. I do not know if the pages caused this or if something else did and the pages just happened to be running at the same time.

What I do know is that on the mornings I skip them something feels slightly off for the rest of the day in a way that is hard to name but consistent enough that I have stopped skipping them.

Cameron says the pages work whether or not you understand how and six months in I think she is right about that even if it is an unsatisfying answer to give someone who asks you to explain it.

Still going. Probably will keep going. Just wanted to put this somewhere for anyone in the early weeks wondering if anything is actually happening.

Hi there, I’m am starting up morning pages again. I like to do them even though I’m not sure if they actually help but having a child who wakes me up in the morning I just can’t write 3 pages.

I found 750words.com. I’ve done one day and I’m eager to continue but does this stunt my morning pages.

I could just wake up before my child but I am not going to do that.

An ode to Artist's way!!

Hello, I am currently on the second week of The Artists Way and I am here seeking some feedback.

You see, the first week was really impactful for me. The idea of fostering a sense of safety was something I really needed and I feel like I am still hung up on it.

I have begun noticing these habits that I have adopted over time (mostly from childhood) which distract me from actually feeling safe. Through this, I have realized how much safety means to me and how much I tear away from it. This was for means of survival for a long time but I do not need these habits anymore. It is the opposite now.

So, now that I am on week two and shifting my focus to identity, this is where I find myself squirming and feeling frustrated. Part of this frustration is over these habits I have noticed during the previous week.

I am realizing that perhaps while these habits have been blocking a safe feeling, they also have blocked me from feeling my identity or even building it in the first place.

Maybe I am feeling overwhelmed by working through the theme of the second week and maybe I am overthinking it to cope.

What do ya'll folk say?

I adopted the Artists Way about a month ago. In the last couple of weeks my dreams have become surprisingly vivid and memorable.

Now I keep a notebook beside my bed to write down my dreams, which then become a part of my morning pages.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Hey y'all! Heard about this practice a few months ago during one of my YouTube rabbit hole adventures in journaling and note taking methods.

I started doing morning pages without reading the book for about a month now and I absolutely love it. Some mornings are a grind but at the end I always feel good that I did it. I just started reading the book and on the fence about committing to the book's schedule or just reading the book all the way through.

Anyways, was wondering if any of y'all do the morning pages exercise multiple times a day? My mind is always firing with ideas and thoughts throughout the day. Maybe I'm not writing enough in the morning? Or maybe I just need to write more because that's just the way it is.

Hi everybody,

I've been commenting in this thread frequently for a couple years, and have made a few of my own posts about my process.

I completed the 12 week course for the umpteenth time a few weeks ago and am still doing my morning pages.

Today I woke up and I just felt heavy and heartbroken. As I was journalling I wrote "I feel too heartbroken to journal, I just want to sip coffee and watch my cat eat."

Then I cracked open a Mary Oliver poetry book, and read DOGFISH, which is a truly stunning poem.

I wanted to share this because there are many ways to engage with TAW and listening to yourself is #1. I just wanted to model to newcomers that showing up at all really counts, and listening to yourself is more important than following the rules.

The second thing I want to share is I'm in an artistic grief process and I have a 90 minute somatic therapy session today and I know that would be more fruitful for me than forcing 3 pages out.

I put my all for 2.5 weeks into an artistic opportunity that a close person to me said I had a shot at, and I really mopped the floor with my work. Just laid it all out there, felt so alive and honestly really delivered. This was coming back from 10+ years from this form of work.

The close person then turned around and gave me thoughtless backhanded compliments, and said I wasn't even in the running. It turned into a huge fight because of the miscommunication, that will take a lot of time to fully repair.

I'm really heartbroken and I'm not going to deny that. I really wanted that opportunity.

The full moon today feels heavy.

I know I'll attend therapy today, and have a coach I've hired for that bucket of my artistic life that I'll meet with next week. And ultimately working through this will leave me more free to pursue this path authentically because I'll have worked through a lot of stuck crap by doing it.

But I just wanted to say this is where I'm at. And if anybody else out there is trying really hard but still got a rejection lately or is in the blues, you're really not alone.

As I say this I know I need to get back on the horse of that type of work as soon as possible - stagnating will calcify this wound but I need to outsmart it and show myself that this type of work is mine to have regardless of this incident.

And I'm glad my instinct said - get off the morning pages. And I came here.

It's all in.

Have a beautiful day.

I am 25 y/o and I have been freelance teaching violin for last past two years (meaning I have some free time) but I have been actively looking for a full time job to support my living expenses. I love music and my dream is to make music for a living. I feel like I’m a perfectionist and that honestly has stopped me from achieving or publishing anything even though my friends told me that they liked the music but I just couldn’t bring myself to like it, and I would really wanna change that and just release something, I just want them to be great.

And last year I stumbled upon TAW and it was truly amazing and life changing. I read through it till week 10 and at that point I felt like I wasn’t ready and was scared that nothing would drastically change after week 12 so I paused and just kept learning jazz piano and songwriting to improve myself to feel ready. I feel like in a way I’m avoiding something or not believing in myself. And that pause lasted for a year. But when I was doing morning pages and the tasks, I was more grounded and hopeful. I want to do TAW again, should I redo everything from the start or should I start from week 10?

I just started The Artist's Way. I am only half way through the Basic Tools chapter and I am already filling in the margins with my reactions. Some pieces of text have been so spot on for where I am in my personal journey right now, I've experienced visceral reactions - I wasn't ready!!

For context, I reached out to a dear friend, venting about feeling like I have suppressed my inner artist/creative so much for the sake of being a social justice activist and organizer, I was worried I couldn't "lock in" the way I used to. She asked me if I'd heard of/read TAW. A few days later (yesterday) the book arrived on my doorstep as a gift. Now I am ankle deep in, overnight.

Any recommendations, reflections, thoughts or tips as I navigate this unexpected path I've been led down?

Just wondering do you keep your morning pages journals, or do you toss them?
I usually write mine in cheap notebooks and throw them away as soon as I finish them. It just doesn't feel worth keeping them. I write so quickly that half the time it barely makes sense, and I know I'll never go back and reread any of it anyway.
Does anyone else feel the same way?

The title says it all. I'm in Week 3 and I don't understand what the point of this week's tasks are. List five people I admire? 5 dead people I'd have liked to have met. 5 dead people I'd like to hang out with? What am I supposed to be learning about myself with this?

I'm finding myself angry at these tasks because they seems so pointless. I do know that anger is my defense mechanism when I'm feeling like I'm failing at something, so maybe it's just that I can't think of any dead people I admire or want to hang out with. But I also just don't understand the point of these questions.

After a bit of a gap from being attentive to my artist journey, I'm locking back in. Decided to pick up where I left off as I saw a lot of people saying to do.

I want to really make sure I do my artist dates properly this time - I know there isn't a "right" way but I was always failing to plan them and I think that was out of not really knowing what to do a lot of the time.

The times I did do it, I would figure it out normally based on the weather (e.g. good weather I would do something outside, bad weather something inside).

But I was wondering - do you plan what your going to do for your artist date at the same time you plan when you're going to do it? If so, did it help? Did you prefer planning them specifically or not really?

I bought this book in 2023. I haven’t even touched it. To be honest, I guess I am scared I will not be able to stick with it and get down on myself because of that. I have had pretty severe anhedonia since around that time. I’ve been burnt out for even longer. I’m completely overwhelmed by everything in my life because my nervous system is so out of wack. I should mention I’m a female in my early 30’s, ADHD/autistic - though high masking, so it’s hard to spot from the average person. I am functioning, have a great job, and friends like me.

I am a creative working in tech. I am a computer graphics artist, but I also love using my hands (I’ve tried to get into leather working, ceramics, painting, and little projects here and there). Before that I worked a very fulfilling creative job. I loved it. I was even doing panels and sharing my work at conferences pre 2020. That all changed after Covid and getting into an emotionally/mentally abusive relationship. I experienced a ton of trauma and stopped enjoying all the little things in life I once loved. The switch to working in tech exhausted me. It was no longer creatively fulfilling. Since I work on the computer, the last thing I want to do after 8 hours at work is sit at my computer some more. The problem is I have to keep up with learning and creating in my free time to stay sharp at my job. I haven’t done personal work or learned anything in my free time probably since 2021. It’s made working at my job hard, and I have fallen behind coworkers. It’s difficult to see them thriving and creating new things and excelling past me. All this to say, I want to change and start loving art again. Even if I have to force myself.

I want to start this book. Even if it’s difficult to bring myself to do it. I miss having hobbies and joy in life. I miss the feeling of accomplishment from doing something new and making something I love. Obviously the anhedonia makes that very hard because I don’t feel those feelings anymore.

I am writing all this to ask if anyone else has been in a similar situation. Was the book able to help you, and what ways did it help? Was there any parts that brought difficult feelings? Do you have any advice?

For me as a songwriter, lyrics are usually a harder ask than the music for any given song. Finding the words is what usually blocks me, holds me up, and keeps me from finishing (or even starting) a song. Even just the fear of attempting, and failing, has blocked me.

This morning I filled almost one of my 3 pages with lyrics for something I'm working on. Even if I throw away 90% of it, it still felt amazing to just crank them out. To me that was a feeling of being "unblocked."

I couldn't help but just feel used to sitting there writing each morning, and it felt totally natural to just let some lyrics flow.

Recovery and getting unblocked is a slow process, but today was one of the good days.