
Week 2: External Blockers (and Internal Doubts)
From Words to Write by by Words to Write by
November 20, 2025 · 1h 4m
About this episode
This episode discusses external creative obstacles as outlined in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, focusing on identifying negative influences and the desire for distractions among blocked creators.
We're on Week 2 of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, shifting from internal creative obstacles to external ones—namely our friends and family. We dig into Cameron's concepts of "poisonous playmates" and "crazymakers": how to identify them (spoiler: they're not always people) and strategies for protecting your creative space from their intrusions. Then we tackle Cameron's uncomfortable idea—that blocked creators might actually want these distractions to avoid doing the work. But ou...
Topics covered
- creative obstacles
- external blockers
- poisonous playmates
- crazymakers
- creative space
- distractions
Keywords
- creative obstacles
- Julia Cameron
- poisonous playmates
- crazymakers
- creative space
- distractions
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- Week 6: The Pampering Paradox · April 28, 2026 · 51 min
- Week 5: The Virtue Trap · March 18, 2026 · 53 min
- Week 4: The Morning Pages Report · February 24, 2026 · 46 min
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