Earlier this month I spent an agreeable day attending a hand made journal making workshop with Lisa Sonora Beam — you may recognize her as author of the excellent visually-oriented creative business primer, The Creative Entrepreneur.  If you aren’t familiar with her work, read on because you might want to experiment with making a journal or two of your […]

Just came across a quick but high performance interview piece with creativity expert Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way . She explains “how she does it” and offers an overview of her techniques for unlocking creativity and tips for overcoming some common blocks or obstacles. Check out this Success Magazine article for highlights including […]

Creative people who wish to create consistently face a double challenge: the challenge of following their dream while also facing a potentially harsh reality and bringing their work to life. Eric Maisel, creativity expert and author of Coaching the Artist Within, highlights the importance of maintaining a focused equilibrium between these two aspects of living […]

Over the past few months I have written a number of posts related to The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. This creativity manual or “Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self” is effective for an individual using it alone, reading it by yourself and reflecting on each chapter. […]

Creative U Turn

by Barbara Martin

in Creativity

Each time I’ve come through The Artist’s Way Chapter 8, I find myself on the verge of precisely what author Julia Cameron addresses in Chapter 9: making a dastardly Creative U-Turn. It’s likely you’ll find yourself in the same risky situation because it’s not unusual! The Artist’s Way Process The ninth chapter of this powerful […]

Dream Do Create

by Barbara Martin

in Creativity, How to Tips

Estee Lauder said, “First comes the shy wish. Then you must have the heart to have the dream. Then, you work. And work.” A similar thing could be said about the creative process. You might have an initial inspiration, a spark, an idea, a feeling. But to bring that creativity to life, you must take […]

Perfectionism is such a fabulous trap. It sounds so lofty and pure and worthy to insist on our creative work being perfect. But aiming for perfection means there is always some aspect yet to be fixed, yet another detail to improve, tweak, polish, fine-tune, finesse… This obsessive mindset or standard or expectation means that the […]

Get Into Creative Flow

by Barbara Martin

in How to Tips

Author and creativity expert Julia Cameron explains that creating should not be a difficult process of thinking something up; instead it is a way of “getting something down” and doing so without strain. Some people might call this being in a state of creative flow. Plumbing the Deep Well of Creativity Instead of thinking desperately […]

In good times as well as in bad, our beliefs about money can restrain our creativity. Do you, like many creative types, feel it is inevitable to be struggling and broke because we want to be an artist, actor, writer, musician, fill in the blank instead of working at a “real” job? Do you think […]

Not doing your Artist’s Way Morning Pages by hand? It’s surprising how many of us really resist this directive. Doing the daily pages and writing them out by hand is an important part of the process. Author and teacher Julia Cameron gives all sorts of reasons why, but for me the critical aspect is that […]