Table of Contents

1 Table of Contents Title PageCopyright PageDedicationIntroduction WEEK 1 - Recovering a Sense of SafetyWEEK 2 - Recovering a Sense of IdentityWEEK 3 - Recovering a Sense of PowerWEEK 4 - Recovering a Sense of IntegrityWEEK 5 - Recovering a Sense of PossibilityWEEK 6 - Recovering a Sense of AbundanceWEEK 7 - Recovering a Sense of ConnectionWEEK 8 - Recovering a Sense of StrengthWEEK 9 - Recovering a Sense of CompassionWEEK 10 - Recovering a Sense of Self-ProtectionWEEK 11 - Recovering a Sense of AutonomyWEEK 12 - Recovering a Sense of Faith EPILOGUEThe Artist s Way Questions and AnswersCreative Clusters GuideAPPENDIX: TRAIL MIXREADING LISTINDEXA bout the AuthorALSO BY JULIA CAMERON NONFICTION The Artist s WayThe Artist s Way Morning Pages JournalThe Artist s Date Book (illustrated by Elizabeth Cameron)The Vein of GoldThe Right to WriteGod Is No Laughing Matter Supplies: A Troubleshooting Guide for Creative Difficulties(illustrated by Elizabeth Cameron) God Is Dog Spelled Backwards(illustrated by Elizabeth Cameron) Heart StepsBlessingsTransitions Inspirations: Meditations from The Artist s WayThe Writer s Life: Insights from The Rightto WriteThe Artist s Way at Work (withMark Bryan and Catherine Allen)Money Drunk, Money Sober (with Mark Bryan) FICTION Popcorn.

2 Hollywood Stories The Dark Room PLAYSP ublic LivesThe Animal in the TreesFour RosesLove in the DMZA valon (a musical)BloodlinesThe Medium at Large (a musical)Tinseltown (a musical)Normal, Nebraska (a musical) POETRY Prayers for the Little OnesPrayers for the Nature SpiritsThe Quiet AnimalThis Earth (also an album with Tim Wheater) FEATURE FILM(as writer-director) God s Will Most Tarcher/Putnam books are available at special quantitydiscounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums,fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or bookexcerpts also can be created to fit specific details, write Putnam Special Markets,375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnama member ofPenguin Putnam Hudson StreetNew York, NY Copyright 1992, 2002 by Julia Cameron The Artist s Way is a registered trademark of Julia Cameron. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without simultaneously in Canada Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cameron, artist s way : a spiritual path to higher creativity / Julia Cameron.

3 P. : 978-1-101-17488-3I. Creative ability Problems, exercises, etc. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) Problems, exercises,etc. 3. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) I. 5 dc20 92 5906 CIP This book is printed on acid-free paper. ARTIST S WAY GRATITUDE LIST AT THIS POINT, WELL over a million people have contributed to TheArtist s Way. It is truly a movement. There are, however, people withoutwhom its safety and growth could not have occurred. I wish to thank some ofthem Tarcher, for publishing my work, editing and caring for it socarefully with his characteristic brilliance and Fotinos, for nurturing and guarding my body of work husbanding notonly my work but my deepest heart and truest dreams with clarity Bryan, my gratitude for fighting to protect and defend my body ofwork, for his innovative and visionary thinking and capacity to understandand forgive our frequently and necessarily divergent daughter, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, for sharing her mother andbearing the dual pressures of second-generation fame and first-rate talent.

4 Mygratitude for being always the kind of artist and person for whom I want towrite good and useful books. With admiration for her shrewdness, tenderness,and sheer creative guts. Emma Lively, with gratitude for her visionary strength and her bold anddaring conviction in her work both with my music and my books. A truefriend, not only to my creativity but also to my dreams and desires. We metthrough The Artist s Way and my musical Avalon, and have enjoyedcombining our Artist s Ways as musical collaborators over the last four Schulman, with gratitude for her long years of devotion andcommitment to The Artist s Way, with admiration for her vision and withhumility for her courage throughout our parallel and difficult gratitude to Pat Black and company, for holding a steady course asThe Artist s Way, and I myself, grew in fits and gratitude to David Groff, for his fine writing and Johanna Tani, for her graceful and acute to Sara Carder, for her deft and careful assistance above and beyondthe call of duty all three of these creative Nave, for his loyalty and generosity as a long-term teaching to Tim Wheater, a special thank-you for his musical brilliance andcreative and teaching partnering through multiple years and also to Mauna Eichner and Claire Vaccaro.

5 For their inspired andfastidious design work, remembering always that form follows function tomake my books embody that artist s formula Beauty is truth, and truth isbeauty. Gratitude always, too, to my sister and frequent collaborator, fine artist andcartoonist Libby Cameron, whose wit and whimsy allowed me to createadditional tools to support The Artist s Way. She well knows the truth thatlaughter is the best medicine, and helped me in administering creative first aidwith a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. My deepest thanksfor her inspired work on The Artist s Date Book, Supplies, God Is Dog SpelledBackwards, and the upcoming How Not to Make Art or anything else thatreally gratitude to Sonia Choquette and Larry Lonergan, for their love andclarity of vision as I labored to bring into fruition large dreams from Edmund Towle and Robert McDonald, for their creativity and chivalryas they both protected and inspired me to do all forms of my creative , I wish to thank those who have gone before me and shown me thepath, most especially Julianna McCarthy, Max Showalter, John Newland, andall who hold a spiritual lantern to light our Artist s Way with their artistry SOURCEBOOK IS DEDICATED to Mark Bryan.

6 Mark urged me towrite it, helped shape it, and co-taught it. Without him it would not TO THE TENTHANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE ARTIST SWAY ART IS A SPIRITUAL are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearlyand moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance oftenvisible to us, but invisible to those around us. Difficult as it is to remember, itis our work that creates the market, not the market that creates our work. Artis an act of faith, and we practice practicing it. Sometimes we are called onpilgrimages on its behalf and, like many pilgrims, we doubt the call even aswe answer it. But answer we am writing on a black lacquer Chinese desk that looks west across theHudson River to America. I am on the far western shore of Manhattan, whichis a country unto itself, and the one I am living in right now, working tocantilever musicals from page to stage. Manhattan is where the singers to mention Broadway.

7 I am here because art brought me , I capita, Manhattan may have a higher density of artists than anywhereelse in America. In my Upper West Side neighborhood, cellos are as frequentand as ungainly as cows in Iowa. They are part of the landscape here. Writingat a typewriter, looking out across the lights, I too am something Manhattanknows very well. I write melody on a piano ten blocks from where RichardRodgers, a gangly adolescent, climbed a short stoop to meet a short boy whobecame his longtime partner, Larry Hart. Together they dreamed throughdrought and apartment is on Riverside Drive. At this narrow end of the island,Broadway is a scant block behind my back as I face west across the river,inky black now as the sun sets in colored ribbons above it. It is a wide river,not only dark, and on a windy day and there are many the water is choppyand white-capped. Cherry-red tugboats, as determined as beetles, push theirprows into the waves, digging their way up and down the river, pushing longbarges with their snouts.

8 Manhattan is a seaport and a landing for teems with dreamers. All artists dream, and we arrive herecarrying those dreams. Not all of us are dressed in black, still smokingcigarettes and drinking hard liquor, still living out the tawdry romance of hardknocks in tiny walk-up flats filled with hope and roaches in neighborhoods sobad that the rats have moved on. No, just like the roaches, the artists areeverywhere here, tenements to penthouses my own building has not only mewith my piano and typewriter but also an opera singer who trills in the innercanyons like a lark ascending. The neighborhood waiters are often notalways actors, and the particularly pretty duck-footed neighborhood girls dodance, although you wouldn t imagine their grace from their drank a cup of tea at Edgar s Cafe this afternoon, the cafe named forEdgar Allan Poe, who lived down here and died farther uptown, all the way inthe Bronx.

9 I ve looked up into Leonard Bernstein s ground-floor windows atthe Dakota, and gone a little numb each time I pass the arched entrywaywhere John Lennon was shot. In this apartment, I am a scant block from DukeEllington s haunts, and there s a street named after him too. Manhattan is atown full of ghosts. Creative power and powers course through its was in Manhattan that I first began teaching the Artist s Way. Like allartists like all of us if we listen I experience inspiration. I was called toteach and I answered that call somewhat grudgingly. What about my art? Iwondered. I had not yet learned that we do tend to practice what we preach,that in unblocking others I would unblock myself, and that, like all artists, Iwould thrive more easily with some companionship, with kindred soulsmaking kindred leaps of faith. Called to teach, I could not imagine the goodteaching would bring to me and, through me, to 1978 I began teaching artists how to unblock and get back on theirfeet after a creative injury.

10 I shared with them the tools I had learned throughmy own creative practice. I kept it all as easy and gentle as I could. Remember, there is a creative energy that wants to express itself throughyou ; Don t judge the work or yourself. You can sort it out later ; Let Godwork through you, I told tools were simple and my students were few. Both tools and number ofstudents grew steadily and hugely for the next ten years. At the beginningand, for the most part, always, my students were chiefly blocked or injuredartists painters, poets, potters, writers, filmmakers, actors, and those whosimply wished to be anything more creative in their personal lives or in any ofthe arts. I kept things simple because they really were. Creativity is likecrabgrass it springs back with the simplest bit of care. I taught people howto bring their creative spirit the simple nutrients and nurturance they neededto keep it fed.