Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Introduction WEEK 1 - Recovering a Sense of Safety WEEK 2 - Recovering a Sense of Identity WEEK 3 - Recovering a Sense of Power WEEK 4 - Recovering a Sense of Integrity WEEK 5 - Recovering a Sense of Possibility WEEK 6 - Recovering a Sense of Abundance WEEK 7 - Recovering a Sense of Connection WEEK 8 - Recovering a Sense of Strength WEEK 9 - Recovering a Sense of Compassion WEEK 10 - Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection WEEK 11 - Recovering a Sense of Autonomy WEEK 12 - Recovering a Sense of Faith EPILOGUE The Artist’s Way Questions and Answers Creative Clusters Guide APPENDIX: TRAIL MIX READING LIST INDEX About the Author ALSO BY JULIA CAMERON NONFICTION The Artist’s Way The Artist’s Way Morning Pages Journal The Artist’s Date Book (illustrated by Elizabeth Cameron) The Vein of Gold The Right to Write God 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 Steps Blessings Transitions Inspirations: Meditations from The Artist’s Way The Writer’s Life: Insights from The Rightto Write The Artist’s Way at Work (withMark Bryan and Catherine Allen) Money Drunk, Money Sober (with Mark Bryan) FICTION Popcorn: Hollywood Stories The Dark Room PLAYS Public Lives The Animal in the Trees Four Roses Love in the DMZ Avalon (a musical) Bloodlines The Medium at Large (a musical) Tinseltown (a musical) Normal, Nebraska (a musical) POETRY Prayers for the Little Ones Prayers for the Nature Spirits The Quiet Animal This Earth (also an album with Tim Wheater) FEATURE FILM (as writer-director) God’s Will Most Tarcher/Putnam books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs. For details, write Putnam Special Markets, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014 www.penguinputnam.com 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 permission. Published simultaneously in Canada Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cameron, Julia. The artist’s way : a spiritual path to higher creativity / Julia Cameron. p. cm. eISBN : 978-1-101-17488-3 I. Creative ability—Problems, exercises, etc. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology)—Problems, exercises, etc. 3. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) I. Title. BF408.C175 1992 153.3’5—dc20 92—5906 CIP This book is printed on acid-free paper. http://us.penguingroup.com MY ARTIST’ S WAY GRATITUDE LIST AT THIS POINT, WELL over a million people have contributed to The Artist’s Way. It is truly a movement. There are, however, people without whom its safety and growth could not have occurred. I wish to thank some of them here. Jeremy Tarcher, for publishing my work, editing and caring for it so carefully with his characteristic brilliance and vision. Joel Fotinos, for nurturing and guarding my body of work—husbanding not only my work but my deepest heart and truest dreams with clarity and strength. Mark Bryan, my gratitude for fighting to protect and defend my body of work, for his innovative and visionary thinking and capacity to understand and forgive our frequently—and necessarily—divergent paths. My daughter, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, for sharing her mother and bearing the dual pressures of second-generation fame and first-rate talent. My gratitude for being always the kind of artist and person for whom I want to write 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 and daring conviction in her work both with my music and my books. A true friend, not only to my creativity but also to my dreams and desires. We met through The Artist’s Way and my musical Avalon, and have enjoyed combining our Artist’s Ways as musical collaborators over the last four years. Susan Schulman, with gratitude for her long years of devotion and commitment to The Artist’s Way, with admiration for her vision and with humility for her courage throughout our parallel and difficult trials. With gratitude to Pat Black and company, for holding a steady course as The Artist’s Way, and I myself, grew in fits and starts. With gratitude to David Groff, for his fine writing and thinking. To Johanna Tani, for her graceful and acute editing. And to Sara Carder, for her deft and careful assistance above and beyond the call of duty—all three of these creative souls. James Nave, for his loyalty and generosity as a long-term teaching partner. And to Tim Wheater, a special thank-you for his musical brilliance and creative and teaching partnering through multiple years and projects. Gratitude also to Mauna Eichner and Claire Vaccaro, for their inspired and fastidious design work, remembering always that form follows function—to make my books embody that artist’s formula—“Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty.” Gratitude always, too, to my sister and frequent collaborator, fine artist and cartoonist Libby Cameron, whose wit and whimsy allowed me to create additional tools to support The Artist’s Way. She well knows the truth that laughter is the best medicine, and helped me in administering creative first aid with a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. My deepest thanks for her inspired work on The Artist’s Date Book, Supplies, God Is Dog Spelled Backwards, and the upcoming How Not to Make Art—or anything else that really matters. My gratitude to Sonia Choquette and Larry Lonergan, for their love and clarity of vision as I labored to bring into fruition large dreams from small seeds. To Edmund Towle and Robert McDonald, for their creativity and chivalry as they both protected and inspired me to do all forms of my creative work. Finally, I wish to thank those who have gone before me and shown me the path, most especially Julianna McCarthy, Max Showalter, John Newland, and all who hold a spiritual lantern to light our Artist’s Way with their artistry and generosity. THIS SOURCEBOOK IS DEDICATED to Mark Bryan. Mark urged me to write it, helped shape it, and co-taught it. Without him it would not exist. INTRODUCTION TO THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE ARTIST’S WAY ART IS A SPIRITUAL transaction. Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance—often visible to us, but invisible to those around us. Difficult as it is to remember, it is our work that creates the market, not the market that creates our work. Art is an act of faith, and we practice practicing it. Sometimes we are called on pilgrimages on its behalf and, like many pilgrims, we doubt the call even as we answer it. But answer we do. I am writing on a black lacquer Chinese desk that looks west across the Hudson River to America. I am on the far western shore of Manhattan, which is a country unto itself, and the one I am living in right now, working to cantilever musicals from page to stage. Manhattan is where the singers are. Not to mention Broadway. I am here because “art” brought me here. Obedient, I came. Per capita, Manhattan may have a higher density of artists than anywhere else in America. In my Upper West Side neighborhood, cellos are as frequent and as ungainly as cows in Iowa. They are part of the landscape here. Writing at a typewriter, looking out across the lights, I too am something Manhattan knows very well. I write melody on a piano ten blocks from where Richard Rodgers, a gangly adolescent, climbed a short stoop to meet a short boy who became his longtime partner, Larry Hart. Together they dreamed through drought and flood. My 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 choppy and white-capped. Cherry-red tugboats, as determined as beetles, push their prows into the waves, digging their way up and down the river, pushing long barges with their snouts. Manhattan is a seaport—and a landing for dreams. Manhattan teems with dreamers. All artists dream, and we arrive here carrying those dreams. Not all of us are dressed in black, still smoking cigarettes and drinking hard liquor, still living out the tawdry romance of hard knocks in tiny walk-up flats filled with hope and roaches in neighborhoods so bad that the rats have moved on. No, just like the roaches, the artists are everywhere here, tenements to penthouses—my own building has not only me with my piano and typewriter but also an opera singer who trills in the inner canyons like a lark ascending. The neighborhood waiters are often—not always—actors, and the particularly pretty duck-footed neighborhood girls do dance, although you wouldn’t imagine their grace from their web-footed walks. I drank a cup of tea at Edgar’s Cafe this afternoon, the cafe named for Edgar Allan Poe, who lived down here and died farther uptown, all the way in the Bronx.