In We Need Your Art, Amie McNee calls artists and aspiring artists of all kinds to do the work they’re meant to do- create.

Using her own experiences as a novelist and the inspiration she’s shared as a creative coach, Amie guides you on why we need your art and how you can make it happen – starting with a two-week reset plan to help you kick-start your creative habit. This isn’t about writing your great novel in a month or painting a masterpiece in a flurry of inspiration. Rather, this process is about practicing small, sustainable creative steps every day over time – five hundred words of writing each day, a pencil sketch every evening – so that you avoid burnout, produce consistent, reliable content on your own terms, and begin to see yourself as an artist.

With frank and empowering conversations on the many issues creatives face, including impostor syndrome, perfectionism, procrastination, and the inner critic, as well as invitations to coronate yourself and celebrate your ambition, Amie provides the framework and encouragement you need to begin to take your art seriously. Each chapter also includes journal prompts that help you apply what you have learned to your new life.

We Need Your Art is a revolutionary reprogramming of everything we have been taught and told about being a creative, removing the shame and fear we may feel at dubbing ourselves artists and inviting us to create proudly, with celebration. This book is a warm hug, a pep talk, the wise teacher you always wanted, the loving parent you needed, and the fire in your belly that you need to get roaring.

I’ve read quite a few books on creativity. Watched quite a few courses on creativity. Watched quite a few videos on creativity. And for me, they bore me fucking shitless.

Every single creator drones on and on about how we NEED to be creative. How we HAVE to be creative. And then they go on to tell us how to do it.

1: Find the time

2: Sit your arse down

3: Create something

That’s it. That’s all it fucking is.

I’ve read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, Write for Life, and The Vein of Gold. I’ve read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. I’ve read Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. I’ve read Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, Turning Pro, and Do The Work, and many more but don’t recommend them if you want to specifically be a writer.

I’ve just found I get nothing out of them. If writing is the creativity you’re honing in on, it needs to be the focus, not trying to be creative in general.

If you need to know why I didn’t get anything out of them, here it is.

I read Pressfield’s The War of Art, and when I closed the back cover I thought two things. This book should have been called 1001 Excuses For Not Getting Shit Done, and, what an arsehole. He mentioned multiple times how badly he’d treated his wife and ruined his marriage, so I had no sympathy whatsoever. Do The Work was just as boring, but Turning Pro had quite the interesting section on Amateurs and how amateurish they behave. It led me to writing a blog post about amateur writers.

When it came to Rubin’s The Creative Act, it was just a bunch of sayings, advice, and phrases that I’d heard a million times and Rick had picked up from the musicians who’d come through his studio. Nothing new to see here, folks. He’s not a doyenne of advice, nor a self-help guru. This book is not for authors and writers; it’s for flower puff empty-headed wannabes trying to find which creative field to play in.

Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, had some interesting chapters, the same for her books Write for Life and The Vein of Gold, but when I was reading it, it kept feeling familiar. I kept thinking I’d read her advice a thousand times before, and finally realised, I probably had as many others had stolen her ideas as their own and written books about it.

Julia’s Morning Pages has become a “thing” in writing culture. I personally don’t have the time, energy, or capacity to write three pages of shit to get out of my head before I start work or writing every day. I did that decades ago in my diary and then stopped when The Secret came out and they all said to stop thinking and writing negative things. So I stopped writing in my diary. Besides, three pages of writing takes nearly an hour, that’s three pages of a novel or a short story I could be writing every day.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. I read it not long after it came out and found it was of no use to me. In early 2025, I decided to read it for the second time to see what I had missed considering the hype was still ongoing. When I finished it, I was in that book zone frame of mind. In Elizabeth’s head, reading her words, so what came to me after I closed the cover, was a natural progressive thought.

As I closed the back cover, this conversation occurred.

My brain: Yep, still got nothing out of it. I guess books on creativity aren’t for me.

Me, with a light bulb over my head: Huh…

My brain: Yep, books on creativity just aren’t for me because I don’t get anything out of them and obviously don’t need to read them. I already know how to be creative. And that’s okay.

And now I’ve read Aime McNee’s We Need Your Art.

I reserved it at my local library after finding it…somewhere online. It sounded interesting and had piqued my curiosity, thinking it would be something different to every other book about being creative I’d read.

But, alas, it wasn’t to be.

As I started reading it, I realised it was the same as all the others and I started skimming it. I’d read everything in that book before. A thousand times before. Had heard it a thousand times before, and seen it a thousand times before. It’s always the same old same old. They all say the same thing.

Books, courses, and classes on creativity in general are not for me. I don’t learn anything from them, and they all sound the same. Find time, schedule, sit down, create. We’re either being told to schedule time and place, and sit down and do it, or we’re being told we procrastinate and need to do more.

They’re not specific to writing, which is the information my brain needs. Plus, I already do that. Find time, sit down, create. They can’t teach me anything else. And that’s okay. They’re not for me. Have you ever read a best-selling book because of the hype and closed the back cover and gone, yeah, not for me? Yep, this is that. If a book is just not for you, that’s perfectly okay.