The Artist's Way

The Artist’s Way reached the Internet, forming groups or, as I call them, “clusters” that were like large melon patches sending feeders and tendrils out to form now a group in England, now in Germany, now a Swiss Jungian contingent. Like life itself, The Artist’s Way, which began to be called a “movement,” did indeed move onward tenaciously, and ev

Pointed criticism, if accurate, often gives the artist an inner sense of relief: “Ah, hah! so that’s what was wrong with it.” Useful criticism ultimately leaves us with one more puzzle piece for our work.

6. Return to the list of imaginary lives from last week. Add five more lives. Again, check to see if you could be doing bits and pieces of these lives in the one you are living now.

3. List twenty things you enjoy doing (rock climbing, roller-skating, baking pies, making soup, making love, making love again, riding a bide, riding a horse, playing catch, shooting baskets, going for a run, reading poetry, and so forth). When was the last time you let yourself do these things? Next to each entry, place a date. Don’t be surprised if

5. Make a list of friends who nurture you—that’s nurture (give you a sense of your own competency and possibility), not enable (give you the message that you will never get it straight without their help). There is a big difference between being helped and being treated as though we are helpless. List three nurturing friends. Which of their traits, pa

Time Travel: List three old champions of your creative self-worth. This is your hall of champions, those who wish you and your creativity well. Be specific. Every encouraging word counts. Even if you disbelieve a compliment, record it. It may well be true.

9. List five people you wish you had met who are dead. Now, list five people who are dead whom you’d like to hang out with for a while in eternity. What traits do you find in these people that you can look for in your friends?

Imaginary Lives: If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? I would be a pilot, a cowhand, a physicist, a psychic, a monk. You might be a scuba diver, a cop, a writer of children’s books, a football player, a belly dancer, a painter, a performance artist, a history teacher, a healer, a coach, a scientist, a doctor, a Pe

Chekhov advised, “If you want to work on your art, work on your life.” That’s another way of saying that in order to have self-expression, we must first have a self to express.

8. Ten Tiny Changes: List ten changes you’d like to make for yourself, from the significant to the small or vice versa (“get new sheets so I have another set, go to China, paint my kitchen, dump my bitchy friend Alice”). Do it this way: I would like to ______________. I would like to ______________.