response 1 of 1:

Jul 25 19:57 UTC 2007

I just started reading a book that came out about 10 years or so ago
that some of you  may have heard of or be familiar with.  It's called
_The Artist's Way_; it's talks about  unblocking one's creativity [for
whatever art form you're interested in] and how this  unblocking will
help in a lot of areas--not necessarily 'just' art specific.  There's a
couple  chapters as an intro with some suggested things to work on [like
one's called 'The  Morning Pages' where we're encouraged to, every
morning when we first get up and  get involved in our daily life, to sit
down and write 3 pages. What you write about can  be anything at all.
And if at first you can't think of what to write, then write just that 
over and over ["I can't write, I can't write..."; eventually, you'll get
past this block]. 

After the intro stuff, the book is set up as a 12-week course of sorts.
There are 12  chapters with first, stuff to read about, but then, some
weekly assignments to work on  pertaining to that week's topic.  She
suggests we can pick and choose which tasks to do  on any given week, we
don't have to do them all or we can come back and do them at  a later
time.  However, she does suggest choosing 1-2 that we really WANT to do
but  also to pick 1-2 that we don't want to do; thinking that these ones
will help us to work  through whatever the fears or blocks are...

So anyway, I'm going to give this book a chance, and hopefully I'll find
it interesting  and helpful.  So far, I've done the 'morning pages' the
6 out of 7 days since I started  the book.  And have read the info stuff
in week one but need to sit down and start  working on the specific
tasks.  I'm even going 'all out' and have made a couple  journals, one
for the morning pages and another one for the actual summeries I write 
about from the chapters along with the tasks I choose to do.

Has anyone else ever read and/or worked on this book?  If so, I'd love
to compare  thoughts and ideas about the process and how it's helped [or
not].