Walking in This World

September 30, 2002
Touted as the long-awaited sequel to The Artist's Way, Cameron's latest is so similar in look and format to the original that they could be sold in a boxed set. Previous follow-ups, including The Vein of Gold
and The Right to Write
and a slew of little spin-offs, here give way to a 12-week course of encouragement and exercises promoted as an intermediate level of The Artist's Way
(inviting us to anticipate an advanced volume). At first and for a long way into the book, we encounter the wheel-greasing exercises that worked magic for millions, helping people discover their innate creativity by devising gentle ways around the myriad obstacles that block us (e.g., listing things we would secretly love to do.) Cameron re-introduces the basic tools—the daily morning exercise of hand-writing three free-flowing pages and the weekly solitary "artist's date," designed to help us romance our inner artists—and she adds the ancient practice of walking as a means of getting in touch with our deeper feelings and truer thoughts (hence the title). "When I can, I walk with friends, noting how companionable our silences become, how effortlessly deep our conversations," Cameron writes. Cameron does indeed capture the feeling of strolling and talking with an old and trusted guide. Her core insights are the same as in earlier volumes, yet her words seem to have grown wiser. She writes about the distractions of success, and about the long solitary stretches "climbing the glass mountain" it takes to bring a large-scale creative project to completion. Her latest book reveals how reaching higher also means going deeper. 10-city author tour.