The Artist’s Way in Real Life:

Creativity, Sobriety, and Writing Through the Chaos

I was assigned The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as homework from my creative writing teacher in high school. It was my second year working with her, and we were doing an independent study.

I read the cover of the book, but didn’t really understand what a 12-step program was or what it had to do with being an artist.

What I did know is I wanted to be a writer more than anything in this world, so I dove in headfirst.

There I was, 17 years old, waking up next to my boyfriend at the time, who my parents let sleep over almost every night. I’d reach into the dark to find my journal and pen and plop my head on my pillow. I’d write for three pages. I’d write about being cold, hating the fan that he had to have on, not wanting to be awake so early. I’d write about my parents, my anger, but mostly I just complained a lot. Then the 3 pages were done, and I’d wake up my boyfriend to take a shower with me.

At the end of each week, Julia says to go back to the beginning of the week and count how many days you did your morning pages. After a couple of months, I noticed a pattern.

If I was up partying with my parents, my friends, and sometimes their friends, then I’d only write my morning pages 3 times a week and skip artist dates.

If I was sober, I’d write them 7 times a week and do all of my artist dates.

I thought, “ I’m giving up on my dream to be a writer every time I do drugs.” Then just like that, I stopped partying. Even when my boyfriend and friends were over, staying up late doing drugs with my parents, I was in bed at 9:00 p.m.

That’s when I became the responsible adult I needed in my life.

I latched onto morning pages for 3 years. I wrote them through my first year in college, and then I was done. Nothing creative was coming out of the morning writing purge. Plus, I’d started meditating for 5 minutes in the morning and at night, and my mind was more quiet. I didn’t want to stir it up with morning pages.

I share all of this to say morning pages have their place, and if you don’t need them, don’t do them.

Do the artists’ dates. Those are fun! In fact, I’d like to start doing those again. That’s probably what set me up to become a writer, always looking for a new café or park to set up and write for hours.

One last thing, if you’ve made it this far, then you should know I’ve been writing now for 25 years, and I’ve self-published 3 books!!!! Isn’t that wild?

Here’s a picture of me on my way to college visiting my great grandma. I’m sure she is proudly watching over me and guiding me as I continue to write.

I am writing two books now. One called, Mom Life Be Like…and the other, Write it. Finish it. Publish it. This book about writing will be short and concise. It will get you to write the book that is inside you. Encourage you and hold your hand through the steps to finish it and publish it!

Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be a traveling writing and creativity coach, and I can include functional movement in my workshops.

That’s when I will getting back to writing the novel series I started nearly two decades ago. I’ll need a lot of time and space to write, and my kids will need to be more grown. Here’s to hoping and keeping our dreams alive one day at a time 🙏

Love Always,

Danielle Mallett