Week 10 of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way finally tackles the elephant in every writer's room: creative block. And Cameron's fix isn't the standard “butt in chair, write daily” gospel (morning pages notwithstanding). No, she goes bigger, blaming workaholism, distraction, fame-chasing, and our need to compare ourselves to everyone else. Classic Cameron: heavy on the...

f you listen to this podcast, you probably dream of becoming a successful writer. But what happens when you actually get there—and find yourself flailing and blocked anyway? Sounds like a best-selling-author problem, the kind that shouldn't have a place in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist's Way. And yet as we take a closer look...

What causes writer's block? According to Julia Cameron, it's not laziness—it's fear. This week's chapter of The Artist's Way goes deep on identifying what keeps writers from writing, even if the solutions are a little thin on the ground. Cameron argues that blocked writers don't need more discipline; they need more enthusiasm and to treat...

A funny thing happened while we were reading the latest chapter of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. She actually had some good advice. That line about how making art is less about “thinking it up than getting it down” that’s simple, but completely true. And her description of perfectionism as “an expensive illusion of safety”...

Making art can hurt — even when you're fully bought into The Artist's Way. This week Cameron tackles criticism and toxic teachers, and we suspect she's drawing from some personal experience. Her descriptions of creative wounds ring painfully true; her solutions, less so. We dig into her motives, push back on her advice, and have...

The starving artist isn't a cliché for nothing — we've long assumed that art requires sacrifice, usually financial. But according to Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a little pampering is actually good for the artist's soul. And while we won't disagree that small luxuries like fresh raspberries, high-grade butter, and the occasional thrift store impulse...

What gives? We hate this book but love talking about it. Week 5 of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way returns to her insistence that belief in a Great Creator unlocks opportunities and success—which we're still not buying. But it does spark a conversation about self-belief: that unshakeable certainty successful artists have that their work matters...

Do morning pages work? Specifically, do they work for us. We begin this podcast by discussing our success following the advice by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist Way to write three pages of stream of conscious thoughts every morning. Let’s say our results are mixed. We then go onto discuss who this book...

Should you use anger to fuel your writing? Do you experience shame while creating art? Have you been keeping up with your artist pages? Week 3 of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way poses these questions with clear answers in mind—but we're not convinced. In this episode, we dig into what happens when a wildly successful...

We're on Week 2 of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, shifting from internal creative obstacles to external ones—namely our friends and family.  We dig into Cameron's concepts of “poisonous playmates” and “crazymakers”: how to identify them (spoiler: they're not always people) and strategies for protecting your creative space from their intrusions. Then we tackle Cameron's...