What is the writer’s method? How does a writer get strings of inspired words from his mind onto the page? Not very damn well if you’re Ben Halaby, who’s filled with dedication but grappling with writer’s block. Halaby stumbles across a book on creativity: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. The basic principle of Cameron’s book is to write three pages nonstop first thing in the morning for 84 days. Halaby heeds Cameron’s advice. And what we see, as the words come gushing out of his pen and soul, is not only the creative process in action, but we see a man turning into his old storytelling self again.

Excerpt from Chapter 5 “Artist’s Date”

Julia Cameron wants all artists to keep an “artist’s date” with themselves once a week. She wants us to do something adventurous and out of the ordinary. It could be for a couple of hours or a full day, with one stipulation: we have to do it alone.  It’s supposed to nourish our creativity.

I went to North Beach for my artist’s date yesterday. Instead of driving, I took a Muni streetcar. I walked up and down Grant Avenue looking in store windows, noticing the creativity the Great Creator has bestowed on all of us. Just think: some human being created glass, pasta, pizza, pots and pans, cement, brassieres, paper, can openers, stop signs, chairs. . .the list is endless. We don’t even know we’re that creative.

I entered a couple of establishments in North Beach. One was a bakery, where I bought a sandwich roll spiced with rosemary for 35¢. The other was Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore. I browsed through a William Saroyan book with an introduction by Mr. San Francisco himself, Herb Caen. Caen said Saroyan was always busy doing something—playing poker, betting the horses, going to parties, or bar-hopping. That Saroyan, he was on an endless artist’s date. And here I broke away from my desk for the first time in many a moon. No wonder I haven’t been able to write; my creative gas tank has been running on empty. I have to start filling it. Yesterday was a beginning.

As soon as I finish today’s morning pages I’m going to deliver 500 copies of How to Buy a Used Car Without Getting Ripped Off to a credit union downtown. A large check is waiting for me.

When you’re on a roll, you’re rolling. Yesterday I got a call from Green Apple Books on Clement Street. The manager wants more copies of my booklet. Should I try to sell it to other bookstores? No, I’d better not. It was that damn used car booklet that contributed to my getting blocked in the first place. I got into the marketing and selling of it instead of doing what I’m supposed to do, which is to write stories, poems, essays, and novels.