The Mourning Pages
An adaptation of The Artist's Way for the working class artist
This post is apart of The Artist’s Almanac: a companion for navigating the natural cycles of creativity—offering insight, structure, and reassurance for artists growing their practice beyond traditional institutions.
Did you write your morning pages today? I sure didn’t. I refuse. Yet, my creative practice thrives—because I create rituals tailored to the realities of my own life instead of Julia Cameron’s.
I have copied out the contract from The Artist’s Way by hand and signed it three times, never making it past Week Four. At first, I blamed my own lack of discipline—self-blame being a practice Cameron seems to impose on her readers. But over time, I realized that her creative philosophy fundamentally contradicts my own in several ways.
While Cameron seems to place great emphasis towards traditional accolades as a metric of success, I know that true artistic success comes from self validation, and a deep, unwavering commitment to one’s own unique vision. When an artist pursues accolades to their own end, they are likely satisfying the vision of institutions rather than their own.
And so, I have to wonder if The Artist’s Way is really the appropriate title for the book—I think the title Hollywood’s Way might be a better fit. The artist must forge their own path based on their own specific contexts, abilities and limitations. There are simply no one-size-fits-all solutions to the creative path.
You and I may never marry celebrated filmmakers, move through rarefied creative circles, see our work commercially lauded, or earn substantial income from our art. Yet in this absence of external validation lies a more honest space for creativity. I believe it is unhelpful to begin our creative journey with any of these things in the forefront of our minds. Art is a confrontation of the self and creating beauty within one’s constraints, not about aspirations of productivity and commercial success.
I do not denounce The Artist’s Way as a whole. The cultural fervor that surrounds it is supported through many endorsements and success stories. I agree with its core structure: keeping a reflective writing practice, artist dates, and excavating one’s past. However, I find the tone overall out of touch and blithely unaware of the material barriers that every day working class artists face. In Cameron’s words, I see too much emphasis on creativity and spirituality as a tool used for personal gain rather than an opportunity for collective reimagining.
My core issue with the program is the all-or-nothing mentality it encourages. By failing to acknowledge the realities of night shift workers, those juggling multiple jobs, caregivers, and artists with limited resources, The Artist’s Way likely leaves many readers feeling even further from their creative aspirations than when they started. As economic inequality deepens the divide between working-class people and the arts, I struggle to see how the program can remain relevant without embracing more flexible, inclusive adaptations.
These ideas led me to develop my own approach—one that honors the unpredictable rhythms of life while preserving the reflective practice that many already find useful. Rather than abandoning the ritual entirely, I transformed it into something more sustainable and perhaps more honest about the creative struggle.
The Mourning Pages
For me, eating breakfast and making it out the door on time in the morning is a feat. Adding the expectation of 3 hand written pages into the mix only leads to irritability, so I made an adaptation to this exercise that works for me: the mourning pages.
The best thing about The Mourning Pages is that they can be written at any time of the day. I write them in the middle of the day on the bus, and into the odd hours of the evening when I am up at night despairing about my future.
This is a space I create in a special notebook to complain, ruminate, and grieve the creative aspirations that just aren’t working out for me. Whenever I feel stagnated, unsure, or undervalued, I allow myself the space to mourn.
When we allow ourselves to grieve creative losses and acknowledge what isn't working, we create space for a more authentic artist to emerge.
Here are some parts of my artist I’ve grieved in my mourning pages:
Not having the time, physical space, energy, expertise, or steady supply of materials to create oil paintings on canvas like many of my favorite artists
Having stacks of failed canvases pile up as a reminder of the previous
Not receiving a formal arts education
Not allowing myself to take my creative practice more seriously sooner
Feeling awkward about early attempts shared on social media
Being born into a time of cultural decay
Accepting these limitations with grace became a catalyst for artistic transformation. Through writing these grievances down, I let them go, and began to see new green shoots in their place. I began to see what was truly unique and valuable about my vision because I wasn’t holding on to someone else’s.
I did not immediately see how mourning would reveal a truer version of myself. In the moment, I only felt the catharsis of accepting certain truths—that my time, resources, and abilities were finite. Yet, when I surrendered the need for constant movement and learned to love my work as it was, paradoxically, I grew even more.
Though the arts are undervalued in my lifetime, and my work may never bring financial gain, making art has given me a deeper presence in life. Even while I may not be the kind of artist I’d hoped in the beginning, something folksier and deeply rooted has emerged. Even if I share something now I will grimace at in the future, I am still scattering seeds I will cultivate and refine over time.
Abiding nowhere, the awakened mind arises.
Share in the comments! What creative losses have you grieved? What emerged in their places?
Love this! Adding "My creative practice thrives—because I create rituals tailored to the realities of my own life instead of Julia Cameron’s" to my affirmations
I love this Jeremy, so much. I've tried and failed at The Artist's Way half a dozen times. I was too poor, too worn down, too uneducated, too disabled, too disconnected. So much of arts discourse has always left me feeling "this isn't meant for people like me." The idea of Artists Dates when I could barely leave my house and lived in an improverished neighborhood - that left me mourning. The lack of any kind of local arts community, sisters, spaces, support - that left me mourning. Trying to fight my inner critic whilst at the same time being surrounded by a society that time and time again told me I was not worth as much as others, that left me mourning. Trying to force myself to write through pain, exhaustion, instability, isolation... There has been much, much mourning. But then there comes what grew anyway. I have, despite EVERYTHING, still carved my own path and way and it is fierce and wild and beautiful, but it is not Julia's way and never will be. Here's to other ways, other journeys. Thank you so much for writing this.