GUIDED WRITING
A good way to become more creative is to write. Julie Cameron, in her book, “An Artist’s Way” recommends doing three pages of writing every morning. She doesn’t say what to write. You write whatever comes into your head. The process of writing clears your mind and leads to new thoughts and ideas.
After you have been doing your morning pages consistently for eight or more weeks, you may want to make them more effective in assessing your current situation and guiding you down new pathways by making them into a guided writing program. Guided writing is focused and intentional writing, writing that engages the self. You can pinpoint the challenges that confront you in your personality, your art, or the world. You can guide yourself down new paths of your choosing. It makes use of, as Alan Watts said in “The Way of Zen”, “the very genius of the human mind that it can, as it were, stand aside from life and reflect upon it, that it can be aware of its own existence, and that it can criticize its own processes.”
According to Eric Maisel, “You inquire of yourself about your past, present, and future. You ask questions of yourself and answer them. You make use of writing exercises of your own devising that probe your experiences. You create new exercises to probe further. You examine pertinent aspects of your personality, relationships, and life circumstances.”
