The Artist's Way

The Artist’s Way is an all-time, self-help classic, helping you to reignite your inner artist, recover your creativity and let the divine energy flow through you as you create your art.

Creativity, much like most other things which are confused for being the result of pure talent, is a skill you can practice like any other. Real artists, real musicians, real writers, they don’t lie around nine months of the year, waiting for inspiration to strike, and once it hits they jump up, write for 90 days straight and then hand in yet another bestseller.

They just show up to practice their creativity. A little bit. Every day. Performance ebbs and flows, as it does in most other aspects of life. But over time, their creative accomplishments compound.

However, if you’re just starting out, you won’t have the fierce determination of a long-term writer, like Steven Pressfield, who soldiers through hours of writing every day.

A good way to start slowly, but steadily is to write what Julia Cameron calls Morning Pages. First thing in the morning, sit down, let your thoughts wander and just write down what comes to mind. Make it a page or two, nothing big, start small.

See this as meditation – a way to just let your creativity flow without building barriers around it. Do this for a week and watch as magical things start to unfold.

I love coming up with headlines for new articles. The scary part is what comes afterwards: writing the article. Even for someone who’s written half a million (that’s 500,000!) words in 2016, starting with a blank page is still daunting.

And I’m no exception. World-class writers struggle with this. A great tip from Seth Godin is to write like you talk. That helps, because nobody gets talker’s block.

Julia Cameron has another great idea and it works for any kind of block: writer’s block, singer’s block, painter’s block, you name it. It’s as simple as it is efficient: let other people give you prompts.

Go to a friend, family member, or ask your audience: What do you want me to write about? What song should I sing? What motif should I paint?

And then do just that. It can be wonderfully liberating to not have to think about what to create for a while, and once you’re done, you’ll be in an entirely different place, ready to take on what’s next!

Michelangelo didn’t create David. He said he found him. Isn’t that humble? One of the world’s greatest artists and he takes zero credit. Just says he found the idea and happened to be the one chiseling away at that block of stone at the right time to…