After many years of hearing about it, I finally decided to pour myself into Julia Cameron’s, “The Artist’s Way.”

I was skeptical, especially when the first few chapters were filled with the flowery, encouraging language you find in shallow self-help books. Yes, I’m a harsh judge, but I also read two books a week and filter ruthlessly.

There were some gems to keep me going, so I stuck with it.

I’m happy I did.

Cameron struck at something that had been plaguing me for quite some time. Actually, she struck many things that had been sifting through the back of my mind and I’m happy they’ve been brought to light.

Most people know the work for her insistence on an exercise called morning pages as the means of unblocking your creativity. However, the book goes deeper.

We have enough evidence to know that creativity comes with effort. The more you produce, the more creative you become.

The temptation with this line of thinking is to attribute production with productivity. If you can find ways to become more productive, then you will open up the time to be more creative. I always had a slight issue with this way of thinking.

I think my issue with the way of thinking originated from something John Irving wrote in Hotel New Hampshire: “You’ve gotta get obsessed and stay obsessed.”

I make time to read. I make time to write. I focus on my family when I’m with them and have cut out many things in my life that interfere with any of the above.

While I’ve been writing daily for the past year on this site, I’ve struggled with the creative part for my longer form of writing… aka… books. By no means have I been slacking as I have three coming out this year, not including the non-fiction ebooks I’ve produced for this site.

The problem isn’t time.

It’s about silencing your inner critic, stomping on your ego and learning how to be creative once again. Once you do that, any amount of time you have will be dedicated to channeling that creativity. It’s all you want to do and think about.

For me, that means I need to spend more time playing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go play with my son.