Refracted Input

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
My rating: **

Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam; 2nd Edition, 2002.

This book is an international best seller and often referred to in discussions on writers’ process, with many fiction writers claiming it has changed their whole approach to writing and other creative writing teachers and writers referring to it as a notable text in the field.

I bought this book to see if it could offer any tips on writer’s block, but it is a fairly standard New Age self help manual. I am not opposed to New Age approaches but having read so much of this kind of material in the past, new offerings tend to blend into sameness when I read them these days. Some of the suggestions in the book are useful from a technical point of view, but personally I didn’t find them very inspiring. Its firm location in North American culture probably didn’t help me to identify with much in the book either.

By far the best and most practical book I have read on writer’s block is Robert Boice’s well researched Professors as Writers. If his advice is aimed at an academic market, it doesn’t just work for academic writers, it provides helpful tips for writers of all genres.