The Artist's Way, Week One

Recovering A Sense Of Safety

The Artist’s Way is a 1992 self-help book and 12-week course written by Julia Cameron, intended to help people with creative recovery.

I came across The Artist’s Way recently, during a period in my life when I am between writing projects, and when my creative energies are hardly at an all-time high. My passion for writing has dwindled, and more and more, my creative endeavours have become inextricably linked to audience desires. Over the past year, I have become obsessed with the pursuit of writing as a career, and have become hyper-focused on “what sells”, rather than allowing the creative process to develop naturally. By completing The Artist’s Way, I hope to reclaim the pure joy of creation.

As I read the opening few chapters of the book, which introduce the core Morning Pages and Artist’s Date concepts — more on these later — I encountered the word “god” more times than would typically make me comfortable. Julia Cameron writes “I have seen blocks dissolved and lives transformed by the simple process of engaging the Great Creator in discovering and recovering our creative powers,” and as I read this, I felt my eyes glazing over, my mind closing up. I have an innate resistance to giving such power to the supernatural; my creative efforts are the product of my own making, and it feels to me that instead crediting a supreme being does us all a disservice. It is wondrous that humans have this core drive to build, to form, to create, and bringing a god into the equation seems to disrespect humanity’s best quality.

But I didn’t shut the book there, and Cameron later continues, “When the word God is used in these pages, you may substitute the thought good orderly writing or flow.” Now, Cameron is speaking my language. I think all artists know the flow state — the state in which the desire to create overwhelms all else; time slips away, the pure joy of the process consumes you. Other cultures have put a name to this — perhaps they have attributed this feeling to the muses, or called it the dao. Though each of those labels comes with supernatural baggage, there is a very natural experience common to them, one so profound that those who have felt its power might well convince themselves that it is of divine origin.

The first week of The Artist’s Way addresses your sense of safety, and provides a long list of tasks to complete. I think only the most privileged would have enough time to complete every task within one week, but the author is happy for us to focus on the morning pages, the artist’s date, and then select two or three others from each week’s list.

Both the morning pages and the artist’s date should be completed throughout the twelve-week process. The former is three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing to be produced of a morning, intended to clear your creative blockers. They are supposed to get “all that angry, whiny, petty stuff” out of the way, and are certainly not supposed to be formed of art.

Despite being down with the flu for pretty much my whole first week (bad timing on the universe’s part — if there really is a Great Creator then he’s having a laugh at my expense), I did complete my morning pages every day. I learned quickly that writing by hand wasn’t for me, as all my work for the past decade has been of the digital variety. So instead I started using a website seemingly built for this process, 750words.com, which also gives you motivating badges when you write. I am unashamed to say that seeing a badge of a penguin with a bowtie does indeed motivate me.

I found the morning pages helpful in clearing some of the negative energies from my mind, but so far, they’ve not been game-changing. Perhaps that’s a me issue; I’d very readily believe that I haven’t been as introspective as is perhaps needed, and that I’ve not been writing about the core reasons for my anxiety and stresses. Still, despite finding it a struggle some days to write my 750 words, I am determined to stick with it. Only after I’ve been producing these for the full twelve weeks will I settle on my opinion of them.

The second “basic tool” of The Artist’s Way is the artist’s date. If the morning pages pull energies out, then the artist’s date is intended to push new energies in — hopefully better, more useful energies, at that. The artist’s date is time set aside every week to replenish your creative consciousness.

Cameron writes that you might think this “sounds stupid”, but I was immediately fully on board with this idea. She writes of your inner artist as a separate entity — just as a parent and child, or members of a relationship, must spend quality time together, so too must you spend quality time with your inner artists. Pamper it, listen to it, nurture it.

This resonated with me, and I immediately made plans to go to the Tate Modern (and pop over the Thames to my favourite falafel shop) but the great creator / viral disease (delete as appropriate) swiftly got in the way of that. In the end, I went for a gentle stroll around my neighbourhood, and I am very lucky to have a fantastic gallery only ten minutes from my house in the South London Gallery. The gallery was surprisingly empty on the Sunday I went — which was probably fortunate considering I could well have still been contagious — and it gave me time to sit and ponder the works of a local artist (one of her works pictured above). In the gift shop, I picked up two particularly esoteric books on witchcraft and alchemy — neither of which is a subject I’m usually interested in, but my creative juices were flowing, and the mood struck me. You’ll be pleased to know that I finished my artist’s date with some falafel.

Artwork at the South London Gallery

Of the two basic tools of The Artist’s Way, I’ve so far definitely found more value in the date. Afterwards, I was feeling truly creative for the first time in far too long, and it propelled me to my laptop to sit down and write this very blog post.

But there were ten other exercises exclusive to this first week, focused on recovering a sense of safety, from which I needed to pick at least two. Earlier in the week, I selected the Imaginary Lives exercise, a task in which you are instructed to imagine what you might have been if life had turned out differently. My answers to this prompt were: a photojournalist, a graphic designer, an actor, a video game designer, and a film director. From this list of five, you are supposed to select one and engage in some tangential creative work. I originally intended to crack out my camera and do some photography, but the aforementioned illness kept me at home, so instead I redesigned this very blog — some graphic design work. I found this a rewarding experience, and not having to sell this work to anyone meant that I could give myself permission to simply enjoy the process; there was no “good enough” to aim for.

Cameron suggests selecting at least one task every week that excites you, but also at least one that maybe stresses you out a bit. I’d done the former with Imaginary Lives, but picked Time Travel as the other. In this task, you’re prompted to list three old enemies or champions of your creative self-worth. I struggled a little with this; on reflection, I couldn’t nail down any specific negative influences. Instead, I called out more general enemies: the (minority of) readers of my work who I believe have given unfair reviews and a stressful school environment in which it wasn’t enough to do — you had to do perfectly.

I am one day away from completing this first week, and I’m looking forward to moving on to the next. I will (or at least am hoping to) write up my experiences of each week in the moment, and I’m also going to be watching rapper Doechii’s YouTube videos of her documenting the same process after I’ve formalised my own thoughts.

With a mixture of excitement and fear, I am ready to start week two: recovering a sense of identity.

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