Words to Write by

Week 10 of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way finally tackles the elephant in every writer's room: creative block. And Cameron's fix isn't the standard "butt in chair, write daily" gospel (morning pages notwithstanding). No, she goes bigger, blaming workaholism, distraction, fame-chasing, and our need to compare ourselves to everyone else. Classic Cameron: heavy on the diagn...

f you listen to this podcast, you probably dream of becoming a successful writer. But what happens when you actually get there—and find yourself flailing and blocked anyway? Sounds like a best-selling-author problem, the kind that shouldn't have a place in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist's Way . And yet as we take a closer look at our own writing journeys, we find a certain truth to thi...

What causes writer's block? According to Julia Cameron, it's not laziness—it's fear. This week's chapter of The Artist's Way goes deep on identifying what keeps writers from writing, even if the solutions are a little thin on the ground. Cameron argues that blocked writers don't need more discipline; they need more enthusiasm and to treat the work like play. And how,...

A funny thing happened while we were reading the latest chapter of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. She actually had some good advice. That line about how making art is less about "thinking it up than getting it down" that’s simple, but completely true. And her description of perfectionism as "an expensive illusion of safety" hit even harder. Unpacking that idea led...

Making art can hurt — even when you're fully bought into The Artist's Way . This week Cameron tackles criticism and toxic teachers, and we suspect she's drawing from some personal experience. Her descriptions of creative wounds ring painfully true; her solutions, less so. We dig into her motives, push back on her advice, and have some fun with her mad-libs exercise. Remember, we hav...

The starving artist isn't a cliché for nothing — we've long assumed that art requires sacrifice, usually financial. But according to Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way , a little pampering is actually good for the artist's soul. And while we won't disagree that small luxuries like fresh raspberries, high-grade butter, and the occasional thrift store impulse buy can warm...

What gives? We hate this book but love talking about it. Week 5 of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way returns to her insistence that belief in a Great Creator unlocks opportunities and success—which we're still not buying. But it does spark a conversation about self-belief: that unshakeable certainty successful artists have that their work matters and will be recognized. That convicti...

Do morning pages work? Specifically, do they work for us. We begin this podcast by discussing our success following the advice by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist Way to write three pages of stream of conscious thoughts every morning. Let’s say our results are mixed. We then go onto discuss who this book is for, Cameron theory of synchronicity, and what she’s talking about when she advises us...

Should you use anger to fuel your writing? Do you experience shame while creating art? Have you been keeping up with your artist pages? Week 3 of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way poses these questions with clear answers in mind—but we're not convinced. In this episode, we dig into what happens when a wildly successful writing craft book conflicts with your actual creative process, a...

We're on Week 2 of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, shifting from internal creative obstacles to external ones—namely our friends and family.  We dig into Cameron's concepts of "poisonous playmates" and "crazymakers": how to identify them (spoiler: they're not always people) and strategies for protecting your creative space from their intrusions. Then...

We're officially starting our Artist's Way journey—Julia Cameron's program for unlocking creativity—and we're already running into problems.  Specifically, we take issue with some of Cameron's ideas about what it means to be an artist. We challenge her concept of the "Shadow Artist" and argue for a middle ground between making art and handling practical life resp...

Three pages. Every morning. No exceptions. No mercy. We're going to unblock our inner artist using Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. For three months, we'll write stream-of-consciousness drivel before our brains fully wake up - a bizarre ritual Cameron swears by and millions of writers have adopted. But will these 'Morning Pages' really unlock our creativity? In this...

Over the past few months, we've taken a deep dive into AI writing tools. Now we're coming up for air and trying to reconnect with our human creative souls. What better book for this than Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way ?  Published over thirty years ago, Cameron's much beloved Creative Recovery Program is the reason why so many writers drag themselves out of bed for Morni...

We've been looking at how AI chatbots have been upending fiction writing, but how about in news media? Today we talk with former Wired writer and freelance science journalist Ramin Skibba about the issues that chatbots, as well as business models based on new technologies, are having on journalism - both the news that he writes and the news that we read. Remember, we have a Writers Process me...

What if chatbots result in the next generation never learning to write? It's a doomsday scenario that we keep coming back to in our series on AI writing tools. If AI can craft essays and compose emails instantly, why would kids bother mastering grammar, sentence structure, or the art of putting thoughts into words? And here's the terrifying follow-up—if they never learn to write, will th...

In our quest to cover the mind-blowing benefits AND the nightmare scenarios that AI chatbots are unleashing on the writing world, we called in friend-of-the-podcast and editor Kristen Tate to find out if she's using AI in her work.  The answer? It depends entirely on her clients' wishes—and a few hard lines she refuses to cross. But this isn't just about ethics (though we go there)....

We've been putting AI chatbots through creative writing challenges, but what are these systems actually doing when they write? In this episode, we bring in AI expert Bill Moore . Bill works with AI on the coding side, so we had him apply his technical know-how to literary prompts - including crafting the opening of a bestselling fantasy novel. Along the way, we dive into the thorny ethics of...

Is nothing sacred? After exploring how AI might steal our writing jobs, we're now testing whether these digital usurpers can replicate our podcasting chemistry too. Google's NotebookLM claims to transform documents into conversations between virtual "hosts," setting up the perfect showdown with our human-led book discussion format.  For this AI vs. human battle royale, we revis...

We've explored AI as brainstorming allies, critique partners, and research assistants. Now we're tackling the most contentious question: should writers use AI in the actual writing process? Not the "generate a novel in a week" approach (both ethically dubious and creatively hollow), but rather using AI as an editor whose word and phrasing suggestions you might incorporate into...

In the current publishing industry, authors are expected to handle their own social media. If we wanted to be out there interacting with people, we probably wouldn't have picked artforms that have us sitting alone for hours everyday. What writer hasn't wished for an assistant to handle their social media? How about assistants we don't have to pay?  In this episode, Kim and Renee exp...

Can AI truly enhance your creativity without taking over? Our previous episodes left us wondering, but in this episode of "Words to Write by," we interview educator Kate Scott of the "AI for Squishy Humans" newsletter who offers some refreshing answers. Kate reveals her practical framework for taming AI's "enthusiastic toddler" tendencies and transforming it into...

Submitting work to your first workshop or critique group is nerve-wracking - these aren't your supportive friends or family, but strangers with opinions. Yet honest feedback is the lifeblood of growth for writers. The problem? Workshops are expensive, inflexible, and the quality of feedback varies wildly. What if you could get thoughtful critique on your terms, anytime day or night?  That&apo...

Can writers harness AI ethically without surrendering the soul of their craft? In our provocative new mini-series, we're not just theorizing about AI's role in creative writing—we're putting it to the test. Picture this: You're staring at a blank page. Your protagonist is trapped, your love interests are stubbornly avoiding each other, or your climactic scene lacks the perfect...

In this episode, we're finally putting the Hero's Journey to rest and bidding farewell to Christopher Vogler's "The Writer's Journey." And by "putting to rest," we mean cramming the entire second half of this doorstop of a book into one episode. Renee takes one for the team by distilling each chapter down to its least painful bits. Then we'll zoom out t...

Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey insists all stories follow the Hero's Journey template—but does this actually work for romance novels? I mean, we know they have climaxes... just not necessarily the kind Vogler was talking about. In this workshop, we corner romance author Lia Riley - creator of the time travel regency hockey romance Puck & Prejudice - who’s happy to gee...