The Artist's Way

jogging is not the same as putting on your Nikes and
heading out to the running track. Map is not territory, and
without reference points from within your own experience,
you cannot extrapolate what the morning pages and artist
dates can do for you.
Q: The Artist’s Way is a twelve-week program that requires
daily commitments. How much time do I need to devote to it
each day, and what can I accomplish in these twelve weeks?
A: It’s a daily commitment of a half hour to an hour. One of
the most important things we learn during the twelve weeks
is to give up our ideas of perfection and to see a new
perspective, to change our focus from product to process.
Participants enter the program with certain unstated
expectations and preconceived notions of what will happen
and what they will get out of it. And often, just as in a great
short story, they are profoundly surprised and thrilled to
discover something entirely different. Therefore, to predict
what someone will learn from this course would undermine
the very principle on which it was built. It is experiential,
and the results are something to be discovered, not
explained.
Q: What can I do to overcome my self-doubts about being a
good artist?
A: The point is not to overcome your self-doubts about
being an artist. The point is to move through your self-
doubts. Many of us believe that “real artists” do not
experience self-doubt. In truth, artists are people who have
learned to live with doubt and do the work anyway. The