Artist's Way Class Starts Next Week

I'd love to have you join us

It helps me enormously if you drop a heart on this newsletter, forward it to a friend, or share it on social media. Or subscribe to get me in your inbox! I love hearing from you, so you can hit reply and email me any time. Or comment—I adore comments! Writing these newsletters is part of how I make a living as a writer, so I welcome paid subscriptions, too. And to take part in the Artist’s Way class, all you have to do is become a paid subscriber. That’s it. That’s all. Easy and inexpensive.

I got this image from Maria Shriver’s Sunday paper.

Next week my long-promised Artist’s Way class begins. It’s going to be easy for you: buy the book (or dig it out of your TBR pile or off your bookshelf), read a modest number of pages, come here on Tuesdays to read my take and discuss with others and then join a Zoom (if you so desire) on Friday. But if you follow along, I promise the results will be potentially life-changing. Or at least incredibly helpful to your creativity and your writing practice.

What is the Artist’s Way?

It’s a book, written originally in 1992, about uncovering and recovering your creative self. It doesn’t matter where you are in your writing practice or your creative path, there are tools and techniques in this book that will help you. Cameron modeled it on the 12-step program, designing the book so that readers do a chapter a week for 12 weeks. (Yes, we are going to, gulp, mimic that schedule in this class, running from January 14 to April 1.)

This page on Bookshop.org has some great quotes that illuminate what the book/course has to offer. And, to assist you in deciding if you want to participate, I offer some thoughts on my own experience with the book.

My experience

Many years ago, we had a fire in our house. It was a windy, cold November night shortly after Thanksgiving and my entire family—daughter in middle school, son in fourth grade, husband, two cats and a dog—were at home when the fire broke out. I handed each of the kids a cat, we shooed the dog out into the backyard (he later got confused and ran back in), and headed to our neighbor’s house where we called 911. (Pre cell phone days.)

We all survived, thank goodness. We moved out of the house for several months and went to stay with my mother and ultimately everything worked out okay. But I learned something about trauma: one way your brain processes it is to go over and over and over what happened. It’s a healthy response as long as you don’t get stuck in it. However, it left me little room for my writing or any kind of creativity.

Which is when I found the Artist’s Way book. I’d seen it on the bookstore shelves and picked it up a million times. I also returned it to the shelf a million times. After the fire, I finally bought it. And went through the entire 12-week class all by my little lonesome. Nevertheless, I found it extraordinarily helpful in getting me back to my writing—not to mention my beloved stitching and knitting.

A few years later, things were at a low ebb in my personal life. Nothing terribly big, just low. I learned that Julia Cameron was hosting a creativity camp in Taos, New Mexico and I decided I wanted to go. At the time this was not an easy feat, because: not a lot of money and the two afore-mentioned children. But we made it happen (I think the hub knew I was desperate) and I went.

It changed my life. I mean that literally.

We stayed in the most wonderful B and B, a real one (this was pre-Airbnb days) with freaking amazing meals, gorgeous scenery, and convivial people in attendance. I met two people who continued to be important to me for many years (they know who they are, one of them reads this newsletter). Every morning we, a group of about thirty of us, meet with Julia, who led us through exercises from the book. In the afternoons there were classes to choose from—making a spirit doll, yoga, painting pillows (I still have mine but Chip the pug now sleeps on it). It was so much fun

And it also jump-started my writing. It wasn’t long after that I started writing fiction seriously, decided to get my MFA (which was also a life-changing experience, albeit in a different way), and began teaching, and then book coaching. I published three novels (okay, one is a novella) and began hosting workshops overseas.

So, yes, I can truly say the Artist’s Way changed my life.

Why I admire Julia

As with many people in the public eye (gross generalization, sorry) Julia is charming and engaging when leading a group, less at ease in one-on-one conversations. But she continues to crank out the books, practicing what she preaches, walking her talk. (Extra credit alert: she’s got a new book on using the Artist’s Way tools releasing January 14th. I ordered it, of course, since I’m teaching this class.)

And also, this: years ago, when the Artist’s Way first came out, Julia was offered lots of money to franchise the concepts, to monetize it, as we would say today. She said no. She said no because she believed she had been given the tools to share and to give to everybody.¹ She has always wanted to disseminate information widely and give anybody (even little ole me) permission to teach the class. I admire that.

How to join

If you want to participate, read the chapters on the Basic Principles (don’t panic at her mention of God, she has a broad view of the concept) and Basic Tools. (24 pages with relatively narrow margins, you can do it.) I’ll discuss those briefly next week and go more deeply into Chapter One, Recovering a Sense of Safety. And then we will meet on Zoom on Friday at 11 AM Pacific (time zone converter here) to discuss further.²

And all you have to do is become a paid subscriber. For $8 a month you get access to this material (I will send out a preview to free members), plus prompts every month, and other special things I have planned.) You can also get an annual subscription or a Founder’s subscription—and with the latter option, you also receive a Zoom session with me.

Also—please note. I’m not a harsh task mistress. I believe you get more flies with honey (though I am skilled at killing yellow jackets with forks, moral of the story, don’t be a yellow jacket). I’m nice. When Debbie and I teach I’m always usually the good cop. So I’m not going to go all haywire on you if you don’t participate. (I know some paid subscribers might not be interested, that’s cool.) But I do believe you will get a lot out of the class—even if it just inspires you to read the book, or you dip in and out, you’ll get some benefit from it.

And—I hate the idea of being all alone on Zoom so please join me!

So, are you in? Let’s do this. See you back here next week for the first session.

Clearly this typewriter is not being used. But yours will be when you join the Artist’s Way class! Photo by Shelby Miller on Unsplash

I truly believe that the Artist’s Way can be helpful to many people, so if you know somebody who might be interested, please share this post.

Feel free to comment or hit reply to this email with questions.

1. I heard this story directly from Julia at the Taos creativity camp I attended.

2. This is the first time I’ve run a class like this on Substack so I’m not entirely sure how it will work. I reserve the right to tweak as needed!