The Artist's Way: Intro and Week 1
Lately I've been feeling a little creatively blah. I'm making music, and I have little moments of clarity and joy, but overall the creative spark has been lacking. So when some of my friends at a NYE party I was at started talking about how doing The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron really helped them to expand their artistic practices, I was intrigued. What a cool way to start off the New Year, I thought. A course specifically designed to get more in touch with my creative self!
I'm generally not big on self-help books, but since this one came recommended by friends whose opinions I trusted, I decided to give it a whirl (once the post-holiday tiredness wore off). And then when I started talking about starting it, I discovered that even MORE of my friends had done it and ALSO loved it! And then I convinced 4 friends to do it with me, which felt a little like I was recruiting people for a cult. I think I might be really powerful?
Anyway. One of the things she has you do at the end of every week is write a reflection on how the week went. And I thought it might be fun to do those as blog posts, to share my experiences with those who are interested in following along.
So!
Week 1
This lady sure has a lot of nuggets of wisdom that are really insightful and profound, and then says some things that are so incredibly privileged and tone-deaf that I legitimately burst out laughing. There's also a lot of God stuff that I don't really vibe with.
That being said, I mostly liked this week's chapter and exercises.
I'm going to start by talking about the two recurring weekly exercises. They're called the morning pages and the artist's date. I think these are going to both end up being very important parts of the experience.
The morning pages
The morning pages are something you do every day. You simply write three freehand stream of consciousness pages in the morning. I found this really daunting at first, and started off with two pages instead, in order to keep things manageable. But a few days ago I surprised myself by actually wanting to continue for another page after finishing two! So I've been doing the full three pages for the past few days.
I journal a lot on and off anyway, so the morning pages weren't completely unfamiliar territory for me. I usually journal at night, though, as a way to reflect on my day. I surprisingly found writing in the morning instead to be really nice! I've been having a cup of tea while I do it, and it's just really nice to write at the kitchen table with the sun streaming in through the blinds instead of in bed just before I go to sleep.
The three page length kind of forces me to be more creative than my usual diary-esque here's what I did yesterday, here's what I'm going to do today, here's what I'm annoyed about, etc. Don't get me wrong, I did a lot of that. Also a lot of complaining about how I didn't know what to write about and how my hand was cramping. But I also expanded on my idea for a live interactive string trio performance and imagined what kind of weird outfit I might wear if I ever get nominated for a fancy award.
It's been good overall! I didn't miss a single day this week. I'm curious to see if the content of my writing changes as the course continues. But overall I've been enjoying having this as part of my routine.
The artist's date
The artist's date boils down to taking some time for yourself to nurture your inner artist. This one was a little weird for me because I'm privileged in that I already take a lot of time for creative endeavors even outside of music, and I have plenty of alone time. I'm not someone who has such a busy schedule or spends so much time taking care of others that I have no time for myself. I crochet, I make soap, I read books, I do tarot readings.
But one thing that stuck out when Julia was talking about the artist's date was the playfulness of it. She suggested things like buying a book of stickers and decorating papers with them, or walking around an aquarium. So I decided that my weekly dates should be concentrating on doing new things, things I don't normally do. So something like reading a book wouldn't count.
This week, I knew I didn't want to leave the house, because it was bonkers cold outside, and also I wanted to do something that didn't cost any money. So I opened Apple Music and searched for artists who came to mind, who either I like or had been meaning to listen to more of. Then I selected an album of theirs that I hadn't heard yet, picked the track title that most appealed to me, and added it to a playlist. Then I listened to the playlist and drew a tarot at the beginning of each track to see if I could hear any of the moods/imagery evoked by the card in the track.
It was great! I'm generally not great about taking time to just sit and listen to new music (usually I just have it on in the background while I do other things, and I tend to mostly go back to my old favorites), and it was nice to intentionally do so. And I discovered several new tracks that I really like (and 2 that I actively disliked, but I'll never tell which ones). I usually pay zero attention to track titles, so it was also fun to see what stuck out to me.
Here's the playlist, if you're interested!
This week's exercises
Week 1 is based on the premise that we all have an artist living somewhere deep in our souls, stifled by society and the criticisms we've received throughout our life. I do believe this to be true, but also, as someone who actually did build a career around my creative passion, I felt that this chapter maybe didn't apply to me as it might to some other people. I've never been afraid to make my art, you know?
But I still found a lot of it useful. There's an exercise where you choose an affirmation, something that maybe feels a little ridiculous and conceited, and write it 10 times in row. I chose "I am an amazing composer."
I don't love affirmations. I've tried them a lot, and they never work too well for me. But I did like the other thing she had us do with the affirmations: identifying our blurts. To identify blurts, you write down any negative thoughts that pop up while writing down your affirmations. Then you rewrite those thoughts to be more affirming, basically like cognitive reframing in CBT. My blurts basically boiled down to, "sure, I'm a pretty good composer, but what makes me think I'm so incredibly talented or special that I deserve a career doing this?" Which is bad! The idea of not being "deserving" of a career doing what I love is, in fact, harmful! So it's good to know that there's at least a small part of my brain that feels this way, so I can watch out for those thoughts as they occur.
I also did an exercise where I wrote about three "enemies of my creative self-worth," people from my past that weren't supportive of my creative dreams. My examples were people who I should pursue something more practical as a career since it's so hard to build a music career, and also someone who told my music was fine but not great, and hey, these sure sound a lot like my blurts, don't they? This was pretty cathartic and gave me a lot to think about.
Conversely, I also chose to do the assignment to write a letter to one of my biggest supporters. She suggested old teachers or mentors, but I chose to write to my husband Alex. He's supported me emotionally and financially through some of the worst parts of my career, and he also has sometimes given me practical support in the form of being a second pair of ears to listen to a mix or playing guitar on some of my tracks! He's great, and I think there's a good chance I would be in a much worse spot career-wise if not for him. It was really great to be able to take the time to express that gratitude to him.
I chose one exercise that I ended up not caring for too much. It was called Imaginary Lives, and it involved writing out what you would do if you had 5 alternate lives to live. My list was: novelist, psychology or neuroscience researcher, zoologist, stay at home cat mom, and mixologist at a cool witchy cocktail bar.
Then I was supposed to choose one of the careers and do something with it. I already make cocktails at home, do some writing, and have a cat that I hang out with all the time, so mixologist, novelist, and stay at home cat mom were out. I couldn't think of anything to do for zoologist except for like, going outside and looking at squirrels, and it was very cold out. So I chose psychology researcher. I read some Psychology Today articles. It was... fine. Haha.
Conclusion
Some friends and I were talking about a big theme of this chapter: the inner child. How we don't like the idea of our inner artist being our inner child, because art is such an important part of our adult lives. It doesn't feel childish in the least.
But overall, I enjoyed the morning pages and artist's date a lot, and I've been enjoying approaching things with a bit more playfulness. I liked thinking about who has supported and discouraged me, and how they've influenced my current mindset when it comes to creating.
And it just feels nice having clear, dedicated time for nurturing my creativity. I feel like I deserve that. And having a group of friends to discuss it with has been so good, too! I think I'm a lot more likely to actually see this thing through now that I have friends experiencing it with me. I could see myself giving up much more easily if it were just me.
Whew, this was longer than I thought it would be. I guess I had a lot of thoughts about it! And the following weeks' entries will probably be a bit shorter due to needing a lot less explaining of things. But if you made it this far, thanks for reading! Let me know if you've ever tried The Artist's Way and have any thoughts you'd like to share.