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

Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

Creativity is play, but for shadow artists, learning to allow themselves to play is hard work.

Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist—hiding in the shadows, afraid to step out and expose the dream to the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the touch.

Parents seldom respond, “Try it and see what happens” to artistic urges issuing from their offspring. They offer cautionary advice where support might be more to the point.

In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Do not do what you should do—spiritual sit-ups like reading a dull but recommended critical text. Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery.

A little fun can go a long way toward making your work feel more like play. We forget that the imagination-at-play is at the heart of all good work.

Spending time in solitude with your artist child is essential to self-nurturing.

The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly.

All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and your creativity.