The Writer and The Artist’s Way

Published April 7, 2026

by Kari Redmond

I’m currently on week eight of my artistic recovery journey using Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. Cameron thinks of an artistic recovery as a way to unblock creativity. It’s a great way to re-find your voice, remember your purpose, and reinvigorate your writing. The main parts of this recovery are writing morning pages—as soon as you wake, write three pages of anything, just write, and an artist date—do something fun, playful, and just you once a week. There are also weekly readings focused on different aspects of creativity and tasks to be completed.

This is my second time doing it and I’m reaping so many more benefits this go around. I’d like to share some tips and ideas about why I think that is.

Take a Friend on the Journey

I’m doing this with another person on a journey. It is a sort of book study. We meet on the phone every Sunday at the close of each week and discuss our progress, our wins, our breakthroughs and let downs. We offer each other insight, encouragement and camaraderie. This is by far the biggest reason I think this journey is so much more impactful than my first solo recovery.

He is not a writer. In fact, his ‘art’ is that of lucid dreaming. He is working toward strengthening his practice of it. It doesn’t matter that he’s not a writer, as Cameron is keen to point out. The artist might be a painter, a dancer, an actor, so why not a dreamer?

Being able to share my thoughts and ideas and momentum with him has greatly enhanced the entire experience. What I might not recognize as a breakthrough, or even simply a step forward, he is quick to point out absolutely is. Where I might try to downplay something as being coincident or not that big a deal, he reminds me, as Cameron does, that that synchronicity is to be paid attention. It’s trying to tell me something. So I listen.

I do the same for him. It is funny how we can see things in others that we have difficulty seeing in ourselves

The Spiritual Journey

If you believe in God, this book might especially resonate with you. But for myself, as an atheist, both times I’ve entered into the journey I struggled with the spiritual/god side of things within. I wasn’t sure this book was for me given all the references to a god. However, on my first journey, someone advised me to simply replace every ‘god’ with ‘universe.’ It works.

I am spiritual, just a different kind than Cameron, and replacing those instances with ‘universe’ helped me to read and understand the theories better. I was then able to apply them to myself.

Extra Tools

This go around, I was gifted with a few companion books, one a journal for morning pages and the other a journal for the weekly tasks. You don’t need these books. You can surely write your pages in a pretty journal you pick out and your tasks in a standard notebook should you chose. But something about having all these tools made me feel more prepared, more ready. I looked forward to the quotes within the morning pages journal and the dedicated space to complete the tasks.

Keep Morning Pages Separate

I’ve been writing morning pages since my last artistic recovery. I’ve also been daily journal writing since I was probably 12 years old. This meant that eventually my morning pages morphed into my journal and I was writing more about my daily activity rather my thoughts, feelings, ideas. They became less morning pages and more journal.

This go around, I was determined to change that. It was perhaps the biggest change I made. I started writing my daily journal at night before bed in whatever pretty journal I loved. These are often brief accounts of each day, written quickly.

Then I write my morning page each morning upon waking up in the companion journal. This allows me to wander, to go where I need and want to go in those pages. I’ve even started to take small notes at night after my journal writing about what I’d like to explore further in my morning pages the next day.

This also helps when I’m stuck and not sure what to write about, staring at a blank page. I’ve set myself up for success by leaving notes of things I might have forgotten otherwise.

While I also think age and simply where I am in my sense of self and my identity as a writer make this journey much more beneficial, I know these few tips and ideas have surely made it a more productive and creative endeavor. I hope you find them helpful and if you’re thinking of beginning The Artist’s Way journey, I bet you could find some other artists to join you at Pikes Peak Writers.

Kari Redmond is a freelance writer from Fort Collins, Colorado. In addition to two literary novels, This Story Takes Place in a Bar, and What We Let Go, she writes short stories, flash fiction, poetry, articles, and essays. Her work is published in a variety of literary journals including, The Colorado Book award winner for the 2020 best anthology, Rise: An Anthology of Change, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and Medusa Rising. Aside from writing, her passions include attending live music festivals, SCUBA diving, reading, and traveling. Her goal is to visit every country in the world. Grenada is number 71.

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