When the BlogHer book club announced it was reviewing Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way Toolkit, I was excited until I realized it wasn’t a typical book review. It’s more of an online, inspirational guide. I was going to be expected to do something, every day. I am awful at doing something every day, even if it’s meant as motivation to reach my life’s absolute desires. I am good, however, at feeling guilty over not doing the something I was supposed to be doing every day.
Morning pages are Cameron’s suggestion to write first thing in the morning. Yeah, pretty much failed that. My mornings are hectic and overrun. Yes, I could have pushed myself to wake earlier to write three pages of random thoughts in longhand each day. The awful truth: I didn’t want to. I can sit here and tell you I want nothing more in this world than to be a full time writer. A novelist, even. Yet, when it came to an exercise that could help me write every day, I balked. I didn’t believe it would be beneficial “enough.” This also forced me to admit that maybe I’m not willing to do whatever it takes to achieve my dream. That was a scary though that has been effectively pushed under the piles of papers I should have been using to write my morning pages.
Every day I’d log on to the toolkit space and read an inspirational line or two. I would go into the portion that suggests new things to do. I would smile and then do nothing. I never acted on the random requests. I did, however, use the note taking section. Maybe I’m more of a late day pages person.
Overall, the My Artist’s Way Toolkit online service is great for those who intend on following it to the letter, those who have time to do so. I feel like I let Julia Cameron down because I didn’t get anything substantial out of what could genuinely be a worthwhile experience for a writer. But understand that I didn’t get what I could have out of it because I barely applied myself like I should have. I let things that could have been put off get in the way. Maybe I’ll continue even though my review is over, just to prove to myself that I am not as lazy as I feel.
This is a paid review for BlogHer. The words, however are all mine (well, the words aren’t mine, I didn’t make up these words. Well, I did make up the words, but I didn’t make the words up. Glad we cleared that up).
Join the discussion here: The Artist’s Toolkit on BlogHer.
This is very interesting. And I totally know that that is exactly what I would have done! Or failed to do! You know what I think? I think that being a blogger effectively achieves for you what the artists way thing is supposed to do. I may not blog every day, but sitting down to write several times a week. So you didn’t need to write pages every morning, because your brain is already storing up stuff to write a blog post about! And btw, you should absolutely start a novel. At least start bouncing something around in your head. I’d read it. I say go for it.