In January-March of 2011 I worked through The Artist’s Way. I read mostly on my Kindle, and posted quotes I like to my Facebook page. I’m compiling my list here so I can delete the individual posts there. Preceding each quote is the comment, if any, I posted along with it. Any quote not attributed is by Julia Cameron.

love this quote, it fits with my Word of the Year JOY

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy! LOUISE BOGAN

note to self…

Do not let your self-doubt turn into self-sabotage.

must rememer this when my Censor starts her crazy perfectionist ranting

You will discover the joy of practicing your creativity. The process, not the product, will become your focus.

Julia forgot to say clean. I know I am not the only person whose instinct when angry is to clean.

ANGER IS FUEL. We feel it and we want to do something. Hit someone, break something, throw a fit, smash a fist into the wall, tell those bastards. But we are nice people, and what we do with our anger is stuff it, deny it, bury it, block it, hide it, lie about it, medicate it, muffle it, ignore it. We do everything but listen to it.

Proud to say I did not abandon my MPs when things got tough last week. 🙂

In my years of watching people work with morning pages, I have noticed that many tend to neglect or abandon the pages whenever an unpleasant piece of clarity is about to emerge.

TAW chapter 5

Recovery is the process of finding the river and saying yes to its flow, rapids and all.

Wow. I love this one.

It seems to work more like we shake the apple tree and the universe delivers oranges.

Yes. Love this.

Expect the universe to support your dream. It will.

“A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places,” said Paul Gardner. A book is never finished. But at a certain point you stop writing it and go on to the next thing. A film is never cut perfectly, but at a certain point you let go and call it done. That is a normal part of creativity—letting go. We always do the best that we can by the light we have to see by.

hmmm…. yes. I agree. not with everything she says but this is so true.

QUESTION: What would I do if I didn’t have to do it perfectly? ANSWER: A great deal more than I am.

Usually, when we say we can’t do something, what we mean is that we won’t do something unless we can guarantee that we’ll do it perfectly.

in order to move through loss and beyond it, we must acknowledge it and share it.

Aha moment. Right here. Yup.

In order to recover our sense of hope and the courage to create, we must acknowledge and mourn the scars that are blocking us.

OMG. Hell to the yes.

Do not call the inability to start laziness. Call it fear.

umm… guilty!

Until we know better, we call a great many creative swans ugly ducklings. This is an indignity we offer our brainchildren as they rear their heads in our consciousness. We judge them like beauty-pageant contestants.

Believe.

It is the inner commitment to be true to ourselves and follow our dreams that triggers the support of the universe.