Book Recommendation: The Artist's Way, Part II

I ended the last post with a note about how comparing our work to others' forces us outside of ourselves and what we can do. Julia Cameron takes it further by talking about originality - "...each of us is our own country, an interesting place to visit. It is the accurate mapping of our own creative interests that invites the term 'original'. We are the 'origin' of our art, its homeland. Viewed this way, originality is the process of remaining true to ourselves."

This book helped me rediscover that it's okay to mull, to doodle, to sit and not-think and to let my imagination take me where it wants to go. I'm so tired of feeling like I'm forcing everything, wrangling it into a corral (or into an outline.)  Cameron says, "All too often, we try to push, pull, outline and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender, not control." Whoo hoo!

Probably my favorite comparison/description in the whole book is this  - "Ideas, like stalactites and stalagmites, form in the dark inner cave of consciousness...Let them grow in dark and mystery. Let them form on the roof of our consciousness. Let them hit the page in droplets. Trusting this slow and seemingly random drip, we will be startled one day by the flash of "Oh! That's IT!"" 

I hope you all enjoyed this book recommendation. Please feel free to leave comments about what you've read here or let us know if you've already read The Artist's Way and your thoughts on it.