Starting today, I’m re-learning how to create a daily writing habit by doing Julia Cameron‘s twelve-week Artist’s Way Program.

The program is based on the belief that “creative recovery (or discovery) is a teachable, trackable spiritual process.” It promises to link creativity to spirituality by “undertaking spiritual exercises to achieve alignment with the creative energies of the universe.”

The program seeks to guide you through the process of recovering your Creative self from a variety of blocks. Over twelve weeks, through a series of creative exercises, it aims to help you recover, in sequence, your sense of: safety, identity, power, integrity, possibility, abundance, connection, strength, compassion, self-protection, autonomy and faith.

Even Elizabeth Gilbert swears by it:

The first time I did the program, I had decided by end of it that I wanted to 1) travel to Italy and learn Italian, 2) Go to an Ashram in India, and 3) Return to Indonesia to study with the old medicine man I’d once met there. We all know what THAT decision led to. . . Without The Artist’s Way, there would have been no ‘Eat, Pray, Love’.

In essence, the programs promises to be a combination of a writing workshop, detox and therapy. I don’t really expect to trigger cosmic synchronicity — “we change and the universe furthers and expands that change” — but I am intrigued enough to try.

At the core of the Artist’s Way program are two practices: a daily practice called morning pages and a weekly practice called artist dates.

Morning pages are three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning, and not shared with anyone else. They are designed to serve as both brain drain and creative meditation, teach you that mood doesn’t matter, silence your inner censor’s criticism, move beyond your logic brain to access your artist brain, and find your own quiet centre, connect with the source of wisdom within.

Artist dates are weekly two-hour blocks of time, committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. They are solo excursions or play dates with your creative child to explore something that interests you, inspires you, ignites your imagination. They are designed to fill your inner well of images and inspiration, replenish the creative reserves with mystery, magic, whimsey and delight, so that you might later draw upon them.

The morning pages acquaint us with what we think and what we think we need. This is step one, analogous to prayer. In the course of the release engendered by our artist date, step two, we begin to hear solutions.

The first step of the Artist’s Way program is to make a creativity contract with yourself; here’s mine:

I understand that I am undertaking an intense, guided encounter with my own creativity. I commit myself to the twelve-week duration of the course. I commit to weekly reading, daily morning pages, a weekly artist date, and the fulfilment of each week’s tasks. I further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions for me to deal with. I commit myself to excellent self-care — adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and pampering — for the duration of the course.

Let’s begin.