Continuing our serialization of The Artist’s Journey. If you’re just plugging into the series for the first time, click on the following links to access any of the first eight parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8. 38. AN ARTIST IS IN TOUCH WITH HER TIME By “time,” I mean era or generation. Picasso’s Cubism and Hemingway’s equally multi-planed prose both evolved out of the mass-mechanical, herky-jerky style and rhythm of the era before and after World War I (a period that also produced the machine gun and the self-amortizing mortgage.) So…

Continuing our serialization of The Artist’s Journey, we’re picking up from last week, where the subject had become “What exactly is an artist?” We were delineating in that post the qualities that an artist possesses in her or his work. If you’re plugging into the series for the first time, click on the following links to access the first seven parts of the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.

Continuing our serialization of The Artist’s Journey … to refresh our memory, the primary thesis of this book is that our evolution as writers and artists hits an inflection point on that day when we realize that our Searching Years are over, our questing dues have been paid (in other words, our “hero’s journey” has reached its completion), and we must now advance into a second journey, in which for the first time we with full awareness and seriousness embrace our calling as artists. At that point, we “turn pro” and start asking the questions all artists must ask of themselves on…

Continuing our serialization of The Artist’s Journey … to refresh our memory, the primary thesis of this book is that our evolution as writers and artists hits an inflection point on that day when we realize that our Searching Years are over, our questing dues have been paid (in other words, our “hero’s journey” has reached its completion), and we must now advance into a second journey, in which for the first time we with full awareness and seriousness embrace our calling as artists. At that point, we “turn pro” and start asking the questions all artists must ask of…

As we continue this serialization, we’re hard at work on putting together the actual book—as an eBook, a physical paperback, and an audiobook. We’re in copy-editing and cover design right now. I’ll keep you apprised, for sure, as we progress … Now back to the book (we were in the section called “Characteristics of the Artist’s Journey”): 13. THE ARTIST’S JOURNEY IS MENTAL The sculptor may shape marble or manipulate bronze. The architect may work in steel and stone. But these materials are merely the physical embodiment of an image that the artist sees inside her mind. The artist’s medium…

We’re a week into the launch of the new site and The War of Art Mini-Course. The course is on the house, so check it out and let us know what you think. And now back to our regularly-scheduled programming . . .  Herewith, the ongoing serialization of The Artist’s Journey (if you missed any previous installments, scroll down through the previous posts immediately below):   7. A GIFT FOR THE PEOPLE In the mythology of the hero’s journey, the hero at the conclusion of her ordeal returns home safely from her wanderings. But she does not arrive empty-handed. She…

Friends and members, welcome to our re-designed site! Explore a little and you’ll discover a free five-part War of Art mini-series. This is brand-new, read by me. Each section is about five minutes long. The audio is a sort of intro to the principles of Resistance and the idea of Turning Pro. Click here to sign up and we’ll shoot it straight to your Inbox. Don’t be scared of the new site. It’s made for ease of access to all the resources we’ve been putting in place over the past few years. And now … back to our ongoing serialization…

THE HERO’S JOURNEY AND THE ARTIST’S JOURNEY {continuing from last week’s post}     I have a theory about the Hero’s Journey. We all have one. We have many, in fact. But our primary hero’s journey as artists is the passage we live out, in real life, before we find our calling. The hero’s journey is the search for that calling. It’s preparation. It’s initiation (or more precisely, self-initiation). On the hero’s journey, we see, we experience, we suffer. We learn. On our hero’s journey, we acquire a history that is ours alone. It’s a secret history, a private history,…

  Stealing a phrase (above) from Seth Godin, I’m going to try something a little different over the next few weeks and maybe more. I’m gonna serialize a book I’ve been working on. The book is about writing. I don’t have a title yet but the premise is that there’s such a thing as “the artist’s journey.” The artist’s journey is different from “the hero’s journey.” The artist’s journey is the process we embark upon once we’ve found our calling, once we know we’re writers but we don’t know yet exactly what we’ll write or how we’ll write it. These…

  Steven Spielberg loves to tease us with his villains. He shows them only indirectly. In the audience we see the effects of the Bad Guys’ actions, but we rarely see the malefactors themselves. This is tremendously powerful because it makes us imagine what the forces of evil look like, and that’s always scarier than actually seeing them in blinding daylight. Remember the scene in Jaws with the three yellow barrels? Our heroes in their boat (Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, and Robert Shaw) harpoon the shark with cables linked to three huge yellow air-tank-like barrels. The barrels float on the…