Tools for a Creative Year
Reflection and insight from The Artist's Way
As I look around my home there are subtle changes everywhere—little leaves, seeds, and found things on my bookshelf, tile stickers in my kitchen, sourdough rising on the counter, two journals full of scribblings, and a pin board of writing inspiration. And that’s just what can be seen. There are new places (mostly cafes) I’ve visited thanks to Artist’s Dates and short story ideas floating around in my head.
As we settle into the dawn of a new year and cocoon ourselves for the bleak months of winter, I want to recommend The Artist’s Way (TAW) to you and share some of its insight. I know what I want to bring into 2025 and what I want to leave behind…perhaps for good.
The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron is self-guided 12-week program to connect with your inner artist and unblock your creativity. My friend
recommended it during a spring writing retreat. My friends and also showed an interest and, so, our bookclub was formed.
We bought our copies and jumped in with enthusiasm. We chatted on Discord throughout the program to keep each other accountable and update each other on highs and lows. Plus it helped us stay consistency connected since Paige is currently living abroad. (Scrolling through our Discord chat for this post was healing!)
TAW may be prescribed for 12 weeks, but don’t let that fool you. It took me six months to complete and even then I wasn’t consistent about morning pages and artist dates—the two main tools in TAW. In addition to those tools, there are daily affirmations, exercises and journaling prompts every week.
The TAW arrived at a time when I was finishing The Big Edit on my novel and starting to query. After four years of dreaming and drafting, I was feeling daunted by the next steps and intimidated by my dreams. I also felt a little lost without this project to work on and yet not ready to start another novel.
What TAW can uncover is different for everyone. For me, it helped me tackle fear, confront destructive behaviors and people, find joy in the process, listen to inspiration, and accept the malleable nature of creativity. Like creativity itself, the journey of TAW will be personal for everyone and yet its tools are universal. We are born to be creative. How we connect to it is a mystery only we can solve.
The Morning Pages
The morning pages are three pages of long hand stream-of-consciousness writing. I rarely managed three pages let alone managed to write them most mornings. They became afternoon pages or evening pages, but their purpose prevailed no matter what time of day I sat down to scribble away in a journal.
I admit I was skeptical. Cameron often points out that it’s natural to feel resistance and I grumbled about them often in our bookclub. It helped when I started setting a timer for 10-15 minutes to keep me focused. As I wrote my “morning” pages, I complained or I marveled at the beauty outside or I meditated on my to-do list. And sometimes, if I was lucky, insight was born.
The practice of the morning pages taught me that my emotions are fluid. That the lull I feel one day will soon give way to a spurt of energy. That heaviness in life will soon give way to light. By getting my emotions down on paper I learned how to name them and be okay with feeling them.
We can face our fears and voice our dreams without judgement when we journal. There is power in showing up for yourself everyday no matter what state you’re in without a filter on your thoughts.
I was reminded recently that spite, jealousy and anger, these “negative” emotions, are an indication to take action. We need to feel these emotions, and they aren’t actually “negative” at all because our feelings are valid. In short, emotions are a signal of what we need.
Our bookclub had so many intelligent conversations about emotional regulation and emotional intelligence. Creativity is an inherently emotional process as we express ourselves and portray truths.
Cameron often remarks that we can only write about something so many times in our morning pages without doing something about it. Over and over again, I would complain about my phone. I started deleting Instagram off of my phone on the weekends and discovered I was less distracted and more creative when I did so. And now, I’ve officially been away from social media for a month and I’m not sure I’ll go back.
I also noticed my destructive behaviors and ways I block my creativity. It’s all helped me set boundaries and reflect on what I truly desire.
Artist’s Dates
I talk a lot about slowing down (or trying to) and going on Artist’s Dates taught me how. We need to experience novelty to slow down life.
An Artist’s Date is schedule time on your own. It doesn’t have to be extravagant and can be jaunt to a new cafe, a museum, or a walk in the park. The bottom line is that you must be alone—artist’s require creative solitude.
I am still resistant to them because I’m a homebody by nature. It’s hard to leave the comfort of home for the potentially strange and uncomfortable. I love to travel and do things on my own, yet my shyness insists on a a fear of being perceived.
Artist’s Dates remind me of a series of essays by poet Joy Sullivan called Woman in the World where she takes herself on a new experience and writes about what she discovers. It’s something I want to try this year.
Often when I push myself to leave, I enjoy myself. And when I’m out alone, inspiration usually strikes. What better way to beat writer’s block then to get out of your head and into the world?
Synchronicity
I’ve always believed in signs and things happening for a reason. Jules puts this phenomenon as “cosmic coincidences” and Paige refers to it as “proof we’re living in a simulation,” ha!
Another pillar of TAW is to notice synchronicity and it’s the most spiritual part of the path. My co-worker said to me, “Carl Jung called it synchronicity, I call it God.” No matter what you call it, Cameron calls on us to notice what the world is telling us. Once you start to listen and notice the signs, you won’t be able to stop.
“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”
And yet I have work to do. It can be hard at times to have faith. I want to be better about believing—knowing—that things take their own time and things happen when they are supposed to. I need to let go of expectations. I can’t control many things and creativity is one of them. She’s a fickle fairy who will visit you when you’re ready. Only then will she land of your shoulder and whisper in your ear. Only when you are ready to listen.
Inspiration
When we give ourself space to dream, ideas appear. Child-like wonder, curiosity, and imagination are what birth great stories. Great art. Ideas already exists, we just have to be open to them.
“Like an underground river, they flow through us as a stream of ideas that we can tap down into.”
So often when we overthink and over analyze, we become frozen. My best ideas come when I’m bored or engaged in something thoughtless like driving or washing dishes. While on the road this summer, I had an image that popped into my mind of a viking hunter on a boat wearing a wolf pelt. This image became the basis for my werewolf short story “Isle of Fenrir’s Heir.” During a free writing session at my writing group, a simple “breaking point” prompt birthed the most cathartic and hilarious short story I’ve ever written—about a witch who accidentally kills her lover and in an attempt to bring him back to life summons each and every one of her past lovers.
"Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down."
Most of the time, we don’t need to think, we need to do.
Process and Perfectionism
So much about the creative process—about life!—is enjoying the practice, not working towards a product (especially in our consumerist and capitalist society). When fear and doubt hold us back we must remember:
“Creativity lies not in the done but in doing.”
Sometimes I’ll feel stuck on a story when in reality I haven’t given myself time to just sit down and be with the story. Once I’m there poking away at words, things start to flow. Even if they don’t flow very fast, that’s okay. I might type a splash of dialogue or jot down a scene or write a paragraph of description. Half ass is better than no ass, as I often like to say.
TAW helped me realize my creative process. I’ve always been hard on myself for being a slow writer. My books are meaty with moving parts, swoony slow-burn romance, and historical inspired settings. But those are the hallmarks of a Hayley story.
There are times when I feel like a failure that I can’t write more than a thousand words in a day. Or write a fast draft in a couple months. But as I accept my process and accept myself, I can lean into my strengths and use a strategy that works for me. Perfectionism tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough.
“Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop—an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details.”
For me, perfectionism and procrastination often go hand in hand. I have to remember to hold it all loosely and let go of doubt that it won’t be good enough. That I’m not good enough. We just have to give ourselves permission to start.
Hobbies
Pass times is such a romantic word. Things we do to pass the time in a way that’s gentle yet passionate. A soft declaration—this is how I choose to pass the time.
I love hobbies. I cannot fathom how someone might not have a couple of hobbies let alone zero. I gather them like a child collects shells on the beach. They pile up and can be found in every corner of my home—under the bed, tucked in a closet, in progress on the kitchen table, and resting on the sofa. From crochet to baking to painting to dancing, I love to dabble.
Engaging in another creative outlet can help our writing too. Creativity isn’t a well that will dry up, it’s a river. The more we use it, the more it flows. There might be a bend in the river every now and then, but it never stops. To engage in hobbies will only help flood that river.
When our bodies are engaged on a task that keeps our brain focused yet doesn’t require conscious thought, our mind is free to wander. And when it wanders it finds things on the path, under rocks and behind trees, and even in our own pockets.
For me, pass times, above all else, helped me connect with my childhood self. What did I enjoy when I was young? How can I tap into that child-like sense of wonder? TAW asks you to reconnect with your inner child and to do things you love for the joy of doing them. By remembering how to play, we become who we are meant to be.
“Originality is the process of remaining true to ourselves.”
In writing we are tasked with finding our voice. This cannot be mimicked or copied or created using AI (thank goodness). It is unique to you and you alone. That could be scary, but it’s liberating when you find it. Especially when others start to hear it in your work. This is a Hayley story. Only Hayley would weave this sentence or this sentiment together. And only in finding yourself, can you find your voice.
“In order to have self expression, we first must have a self to express.”
When we know who we are and what we want, we become unstoppable. When were do things for ourselves and aren’t afraid of our dreams we become a creative force.
TAW reminded me that creativity is a pilgrimage back to myself.
The Path Ahead
I’m excited to discover just how much the experience will affect me and the benefits I have yet to discover. I’m so grateful for people like Natalya, Paige, and Jules who are some of my biggest champions and who inspire me with their compassion and creativity. I know they will continue to encourage me to nurture my inner artist. To reassure me when I doubt my writing. To support me with their friendship and love.
I hope to continue the spirit of TAW by taking myself on the occasional Artist’s Date and continuing to journal. After the structure TAW provided, I have been very sporadic with my morning pages. Instead of focusing on “morning” pages, I want to start “daily pages.” And I want to remember to journal before a creative task because it so often helps clear the gunk.
I’m reflecting on everything I accomplished in 2024 and sketching out my goals for 2025. A big one of which is to write another novel—which I’m calling THIEF, for short.
I will need TAW’s tools and exercises as I start drafting. Fear, doubt, and procrastination didn’t vanish because I tackled TAW. All of that and more is creeping in as I prepare to make a new Scrivener project.
“The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again.”
I bought The 90-day Novel to help me get started with THIEF and I’m giving myself six months to complete it. As I opened the book and read the introduction, synchronicity struck. Alan Watt remarks, “Creativity is not an occupation; it is our birthright.”
So here’s to a creative year ahead. A creative life awaits us. Here’s our sign to claim it.
I'm tempted with TAW by all of the enthusiasm, but I feel like it's a commitment. Is it? I'm having trouble making consistent time for creative work.
Another wonderful reflection on TAW! I especially like how you opened with images of thingsinspired by TAW that are now part of your home.