I bought The Artist's Way three times before I actually did it and I think that says everything about what the book is actually asking of you
First copy I bought six years ago. Read the introduction, felt inspired, put it on the shelf and told myself I would start on Monday. Monday became eventually and eventually became never and the book sat there for two years before I gave it away.
Second copy I bought because I forgot I had owned it. Got through week two before life got busy and I set it aside with every intention of picking it back up. Did not pick it back up.
Third copy I bought eight months ago in a specific kind of desperation. Something had gone flat in my creative life in a way I could not fix by trying harder and I was out of other ideas.
This time I actually did it.
What was different was not discipline or a better season of life, I started moving straight from the morning pages into something called Skrib Writing while whatever came up was still fresh, and having a focused place to take the material before the day closed over it changed what the pages actually produced beyond just the pages themselves.
Life was actually harder than it had been during the first two attempts. What was different was that I finally understood the book was not asking me to find time for creativity. It was asking me to look honestly at why I had been avoiding it.
That is a much more uncomfortable book than the one I thought I was buying the first two times. The morning pages are not a journaling practice. They are a slow dismantling of every story I had been telling myself about why the creative work was not happening.
Still in it. Some weeks are harder than others. But something is different this time in a way I cannot fully explain yet.
Anyone else take multiple attempts before it actually landed?