Welcome back to Honestly, Dear Listener! In today’s episode, we discuss Week 7 of Julia Cameron’s classic The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. We talk specifically about how accessing our creativity is like letting ourselves fall down the well to join the river of inspiration underneath our everyday lives. Often, creating can feel like we’re straining to make something happen. Instead, we posit it can actually be a lot easier than that: unleashing or letting ourselves get lost in what we’re making. Letting go is hard for all of us control freaks, but the minute we can uncurl our fists and allow ourselves to fall back into that well, that’s when we can start to let it flow.

We also discuss the role perfectionism and ego play in our lives.

References:

• “51: How to Find Your Creative Identity with Gemma Sugrue 09.20.24” - podcast episode from Honestly, Dear Listener
• The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, book by Julia Cameron
• The Moth - storytelling events
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - book by C.S. Lewis
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - book by Stephen King
• “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from Fantasia by Disney
  
  

TIMECODES:
0:00 - Intro
0:29 - Emily’s breakthrough
6:29 - Carrie’s horror class & permission to be a weirdo
14:25 - The Artist’s Way Week 7 - Recovering a Sense of Connection
21:27 - Dropping down the well
28:36 - Ego and perfectionism
35:10 - Stephen King’s On Writing

Hosts: Emily Hatch and Carrie Schaeffer
Instagram: @honestlydearlistener
Youtube: youtube.com/@honestlydearlistener