Check-In: Week Twelve

Recovering a Sense of Faith

"Adventures don't begin until you get into the forest. That first step is an act of faith."

I loved this opening quote from Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. It's so true for us as artists, and for those of us who write, it's a reminder that Story begins with Change--either initiated by the protagonist or thrust upon him.

I also like Cameron's follow-up that when we enter the forest on the path that is right for us, "we have a surefootedness." We know what to do next, even if we don't know exactly where it will take us. "By trusting, we learn to trust."

The Andre Gide quote takes the faith required to embark on a journey even further: "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." As one who has been out of sight of land on a small sailboat for days at a time, I understand this concept on a visceral level. I remember vividly being tossed about during a storm at sea and asking my companion if we were going to die. His profound answer: "Yes. But not tonight." I survived--and yes, I discovered new lands--both outside my self and within my self.

Cameron makes much of dreams this week:  

"Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission." 

"Our truest dream for ourselves is always God's will for us."

"It is the inner commitment to be true to ourselves and follow our dreams that triggers the support of the universe."

For me, the focus on dreams--the many exercises meant to help us discover, acknowledge and  clarify our dreams--has been the most significant part of my journey through TAW this go-through. One of my dreams is to help others discover, acknowledge, clarify and realize their dreams, and my goal in the next two weeks is to put together a proposal for a "creative dreaming/creative living" course to offer through my local community college's community ed program. The deadline for proposals is April 15, so I have my work cut out for me. If any of you have resources other than The Artist's Way you'd recommend I use as I develop the course, please, let me know what they are!

Other concepts and quotes from this chapter that resonated:

Abundance

"We have bought the message of our culture: this world is a vale of tears and we are meant to be dutiful and then die. The truth is that we are meant to be bountiful and live." 

Mystery

"Creativity--like human life itself--begins in darkness."

"Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise..."

"How to raise the best ideas: Let them grow in dark and mystery. Let them form on the roof of our consciousness. Let them hit the page in droplets. Trusting this slow and seemingly random drip, we will be startled one day by the flash of Oh! That's it!"

Play

"In order to nurture our creativity, we require a sense of festivity, even humor..."

"It is a paradox of creative recovery that we must get serious about taking ourselves lightly. We must work at learning to play."

"Restive in our lives, we want to do something. But we think it needs to be the right something, by which we mean something important. [The truth is,] WE are what's important! " [emphasis mine]

And perhaps my favorite: "Life is mean to be an artist date." :-)


This is the last chapter in The Artist's Way, but the Epilogue and Appendix are well worth spending time on--so we'll officially "meet" on these pages for two more weeks: to comment on Chapter 12, to have time to read through the back matter, and then, after my final post next weekend, to comment on the back matter and Cameron's final words.

Next week I also want to post images of the playful work you've done over the last three months we've been meeting here: something you've created that is emblematic of your journey. If you haven't yet sent me a j-peg and you have something you'd like to share, please send it on! bhicksgvv at att dot net.

Cheers!

Check-In: Week Eleven

Recovering a Sense of Autonomy

My favorite quote from Week 11:

"To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards. To ask the question 'Why?'

"To be an artist is to acknowledge the astonishing..." 

I'm reminded of an old friend whose creativity and playfulness I adored. Walking into his house the first time was mind-bending. He lived in a tiny place and had some of his furniture affixed to the walls! I've lost touch with him. Part of me hopes that even if he's moved on to a place that's large enough to accommodate all his furniture on the floor, he still has some of it on his walls...

Cameron spoke to me in many ways this week. Here's a sampling:

Stability and Flow

The discussion about different artists requiring different mixes of stability and flow (and perhaps different mixes at different times in one's creative life) brought me back to the job question I've been struggling with. My brother (the same one who gave me that great day off a few weeks ago) suggested I think about changing my perspective rather than changing my job.

I'd been resisting that--not because I don't think life is all about perspective, but because I DO. I'm the Queen of Perspective, the Queen of Flexibility, the Queen of Optimism. All my life I've used these skills to cope with whatever came my way. Like the kids in my last picture book, Monsters Don't Eat Broccoli, I know how to turn "yucky" into "yummy." And another door opens when one door closes? I'm there!

BUT... I have used this skill to my detriment. Sometimes it has not been about closed doors but about closed eyes. I've stayed both in unhealthy relationships and at unsatisfying jobs too long because I can see through the other guy's eyes, I can go with the flow, I know things are going to get better...

This time, because of my work in The Artist's Way, my eyes aren't closed. I'm very clear about what I want in a number of arenas. And this time, changing my perspective means I can see the job as a tool to get me where I want to go. I've figured out how to organize it so the time I spend is mostly enjoyable--and so that I have MORE time to pursue my art! It's not perfect. Some things about it will never get better. But it is getting me where I want to go. It's a pesky bug instead of a nine hundred pound gorilla. Right now, it's giving me a chance for BOTH stability and flow. I know what my bottom lines are and I know what my life will look like at the moment it's time to let go.

Moving Meditation

I sometimes forget that as an artist I must live in my body as well as my mind and spirit. I remember with great fondness one summer when I took a dog named Daisy for a walk in the woods every morning. I'd landed at a friend's house in the Sierra Nevada in the midst of a road trip with that boyfriend of the furniture-on-the-wall. He found a job, stayed in town and did stand-up comedy at a local club. I stayed in a cabin across the driveway from my friend's house and worked on a novel. And Daisy helped me work out my plot points every morning. The combination of exercise, fresh air and someone to talk to about my work-in-progress was pure magic as far as creative inspiration. (Great thing about dogs--they never tell you that your ideas are ridiculous!) That summer was one of the best of my life. Perhaps I need to think about recreating it...

Perhaps I am. I felt the same creative inspiration this week after going to visit Nancy (yes, our Nancy!) in her home studio on the water, then going for a bike ride and a walk on the beach. My morning pages this week have turned into a repository of creative ideas instead of a bitch session! There is magic in movement, not to mention fresh air...

Some great thoughts from Cameron this week:

My art has intrinsic value apart from what the market determines.

"I need to create what wants to be created."
"Creativity is its own reward."
"Our creativity is our gift from God. Our use of it is our gift to God."

Creativity can't be perfected or finished. It is a restlessness, an appetite for exploration, an invitation to expand in order that we don't contract. 

"The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again, to begin anew."
"Those who attempt too long to work with formula, even their own formula, eventually leach themselves of their creative truths."

Exercise--movement--puts us in the "now," helps us focus on what's most important, and gives us an opportunity to celebrate our capacity to feel. Wow!

"Walking offers the benefit of sensory saturation. Things do not whiz by. We really see them. Insight follows from sight. We fill the well and later tap into it more easily."

"The goal is to connect to a world outside of us. To [forget self-obsessive self-exploration and] simply explore. One quickly notes that when the mind is focused on other, the self often comes into a far more accurate focus." [emphasis mine]

"The artist child speaks the language of the soul: music, dance, scent, shells..."

Did anyone create an artist's altar this week? I didn't, but it's something I'd like to do moving forward. Would love to hear your ideas! 

"We learn by going where we have to go."

'Nuff said. How did your week go? Can't wait to hear!

Next week: Recovering a Sense of Faith

Check-In: Week Ten

Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

Okay, so I went through the entire week feeling like this chapter didn't relate to me at all. Especially the part about the Awful Truth and the Deadlies. And then I woke up this morning with an entire laundry list of things I've let get in the way of my creativity. (Criminy--talk about food--I went to bed with a bag of chips last night and finished them off!) The TAW journey has uncovered these things for me, but I got distracted by Cameron's list, which for the most part doesn't include my personal "drugs of choice."

The one thing most deadly to my own creative living, and one I've fought all my life, is, I think, a very female problem: making someone else's agenda more important than my own. I realize (and have known for some time) that I need to be constantly on guard against this. What I Want is part of what makes me Who I Am. To always give up my own agenda for someone else's comfort, pleasure, convenience, whatever, means losing a little bit of myself each time, and I've done that too often.

My current "drugs of choice" might seem inconsequential, but when they are consuming my time and keeping me from creating, they are as bad for me as any on Cameron's list. My peccadilloes: mindless reading, mindless TV, mindless computer games (Scrabble is my downfall!) and constantly, mindlessly checking my email. See a pattern here?! If I read, watch TV, play Scrabble (maybe with real people instead of a machine?), and check my email with intention instead of mindlessly, the whole dynamic changes. I want to be more intentional about the ways I spend my time...

The task I liked best this week was Self-Cherishing. Small victories? I updated my resume and sent several out, and I did some engaging research on early readers for my new writing project. Nurturing my artist? I went to the Leo Kottke concert and saw The Lorax. Comforting my artist? I've been very careful about my diet in the last six months and have lost twelve pounds; last week I let myself have high-fat comfort food several times without feeling guilty. So I gained a pound. I knew why I was eating--it was the anniversary week of my partner leaving. I not only lived through the week but had a good one, and now the comfort food kick is behind me. (Just had a lovely bunch of steamed asparagus along with my lean lunch sandwich...) Lovely things I did for myself? I shared meals both with my brother and my local TAWer, Nancy. And I got a massage! It was an important week for me to be good to myself and I'm so glad Cameron insisted I do so!

Lines that spoke to me, without further comment:

"Treating yourself like a precious object makes you strong."

"Try approving of yourself just as you are--and spoiling yourself rotten with small kid's pleasures."

"We must attend to what it is our inner guidance is nudging us toward. We cannot afford to worry about what is in or out. If it is too early or too late for a piece of work, its time will come again.... Let the critics spot trends. Let reviewers concern themselves with what is in and what is not. Let us concern ourselves first and foremost with what it is within us that is struggling to be born." (emphasis mine)

"All work is influenced by other work. All people are influenced by other people. No man is an island [but] each of us is our own country, an interesting place to visit. Originality is the process of remaining true to ourselves."

"We forget that not all babies are born beautiful, and so we abort the lives of awkward or unseemly projects that may be our finest work, our best creative ugly ducklings. Be willing to write or paint badly..."

What spoke to YOU this week?

Next week: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy

Check-In: Week Nine

Recovering a Sense of Compassion

"There is only one cure for fear. That cure is love."

To keep my artist safe and strong and happy, to give her encouragement and space to create with wild abandon, I need to love her. But what does that mean?

For me, I think, it means letting go. Letting go of the things on which I expend so much internal energy that I have little left for my art: worry, regret, grief, perfectionism.... "The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist," Cameron says. "The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all."

Setting impossible goals sets me up for failure. Learning to take baby steps and rewarding myself for them, learning to "play" with my art again, having fun instead of having to produce a perfect finished product, lies at the heart of my creative recovery.

"Being an artist requires enthusiasm more then discipline. Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process, a loving recognition of all the creativity around us."

I love this idea. Again, it's about remembering that my artist is a child, about giving her permission to play instead of forcing her to produce something. Process as opposed to product. A lesson I need to keep coming back to: my art is process, and the process is supposed to be fun!

"A productive artist is quite often a happy person."

This comment gave me pause. I've sometimes felt that I can never really be a great artist because I haven't suffered enough! I had a happy childhood. It's unfortunate, but there you are...

But when I think about it, my most productive times in terms both of finished creative work and enjoyment of the creative process have been the times I've felt most safe, strong, happy and loved. The times I've been least productive are the times I've been in bad relationships and miserable jobs. Some writers and artists seem most productive when they are working out their angst creatively. Not me. Angst makes me whiny! Walking on eggshells depletes my creative energy. Worry about the future shuts me down. Yes, it's all about fear. (Reminder to self from the work in Week Six: "Art is born in expansion, in a belief in sufficient supply...")

I'm relating to Cameron's thoughts regarding "creative U-turns." I've been traveling along this road toward creative recovery enjoying the insights and inspiration, but reading through my morning pages I'm also aware of distractions and detours from my creative work. I've hung on to worries, regrets, grief, the need for perfection--things that keep me from loving my artist the way she wants to be loved and that keep my artist from expressing herself the way she wants to!

I've become something of a fan of horse racing the last few years, mostly because of an amazing horse named Zenyatta and her jockey, Mike Smith. I really loved Cameron's comparison of my talent to a young and skittish horse I am bringing along: "The horse is very talented but it is also young, nervous, and inexperienced. It will make mistakes, be frightened by obstacles it hasn't seen before. It may even bolt, try to throw you off, feign lameness. Your job, as the creative jockey, is to keep your horse moving forward and to coax it into finishing the course." I have even given my fearful artist a good, racehorse name this week: Genie!

I also liked Cameron's reminder that my artist--my Genie--is a child, prone to sulking, throwing tantrums, holding grudges and harboring irrational fears. I am Genie's parent, guardian, big sister, protector, companion; it falls to me to convince her that it's safe to come out and play.

MORNING PAGES, ARTIST DATES, EXERCISES AND TASKS

I missed another day of morning pages this week, but I did manage to go back and read through all the pages I've written since we began this journey ten weeks ago. It took a long time! The exercise was insightful. It's clear I pretty much know what I want, what I'm afraid of and at least a few small steps I can take to move forward. When things keep cropping up day after day, you know there's something to learn there.

My new artist totem sits on my desk near my computer: a plastic figurine of Wonder Woman (who is really Genie all dressed up for fun!).

I had two wonderful artist dates this week: 1) I had dinner and went to a writers' group with Nancy, one of our fellow TAWers! 2) I had a most unexpectedly lovely day, filled with synchronicity, when my brother came to pick me up while my car had some work done to it. Before he arrived, I walked to a nearby coffee shop and had impromptu conversations with six different people I had interesting things in common with. Then Bill took me on a long drive along Bellingham Bay over Chuckanut Drive, a favorite road our dad used to take us on, through the beautiful Skagit Valley where we saw rows of daffodils starting to bloom and a plethora of newborn calves and kids in the fields with their moms, to a beautiful little town I've always loved called La Conner, where we whiled away a couple of hours in a great independent bookstore sitting in front of the fire and looking at picture books and house books and talking to the owner, who said she must have me come do an event there. Then we had a delicious Thai lunch in Mount Vernon, another sweet little Skagit Valley town, where we're going back tonight for a Leo Kottke acoustic guitar concert. Why is my brother being so nice to me? Because he's a very good brother who knows that next week is the one year anniversary of my partner telling me we didn't have a future together, he's been through the same thing in the past, and he knows how I'm feeling. Oh, and the car? It was actually the ex-partner who tracked down the mechanic for me through his connections, and the cost of repairs was one-third what I'd been told they would be by another mechanic!

As a friend reminded me this week, "Consider the lilies, how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet...Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Enthusiasm, not discipline!

And how did your week go?

Next week: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

Blog Roll and Website List

Check out the new "TAWER BLOGS & WEBSITES" feature to the left to find out more about the artists with whom you are journeying! Please email me if you'd like to have your website and/or blog added to the list. Thanks to Ginny for this suggestion.

Check-In: Week Eight

Recovering a Sense of Strength

I have to say this chapter didn't really seem to "hang together" for me. I had trouble reconciling the focus in the chapter title, a sense of strength, with the focus of the chapter synopsis, an exploration of my use and perception of time, with the focus of the primary task, taking steps to identify "true north" on my emotional compass. What did I miss? I'll be interested to find out if anyone else felt a disconnect with this week's material or if it was just me!

Survival: I liked Cameron's comments on liberating criticism--the kind that causes us to rethink our work and identify new directions--vs. damaging criticism, which "contains no saving kernel of truth yet has a certain damning plausibility." Any artist who has shared her work has experienced both kinds. My hope is two-fold: that I will be able to differentiate between the two when they come my way and that when I offer criticism myself it will be of the liberating sort.

The Ivory Power: "Creativity cannot be comfortable quantified in intellectual terms." Perhaps part of the reason I didn't connect with a lot of  the material in this chapter is that Cameron seems to do what she tells us NOT to do--intellectualize creativity!

Gain Disguised as Loss: I do like what Cameron says about framing our creative losses as potential gain. Every end is indeed a beginning if we ask ourselves, "How can this loss serve me? Where does it point my work?" The key, she says, is "to act as if a silver lining exists" in every creative loss. I liked her personal story of taking her destiny into her own hands by becoming an independent filmmaker after one too many times having a studio buy a script and then do nothing with it. I liken it to my experiments in self-publishing in light of the current lack of a market for picture books. (I've published two of my romance novellas as ebooks and am working with two illustrators to bring two different picture ebook projects to market.) Like Cameron, I've been asking "How?" instead of "Why me?!" I also liked the stories of a lack of success in one creative area pushing people into expressing their creativity in another form. My brother just installed a brand new work table for me and I'm wondering if it might not be time to get a visual art project going again...

Age and Time: Okay, a little soul-baring here... "I'm too old" and "I'm too young" are both, paradoxically, things my Censor has been telling me this week about my decision to quit the job with the steady paycheck to pursue writing and teaching as a freelancer. Now that I'm nearing retirement age, my Censor says, I'm too old for that--I've GOT to think about where my retirement is going to come from. I'm also too young, he says (yes, my Censor is definitely male) because I'm NOT retired yet--I'm not old and crazy enough (and financially secure enough) to let go of the paycheck in these last years I need to boost my Social Security potential (assuming Social Security even exists in another few years). So the decision that I thought was made seems to be unraveling. Yes, sometimes the job feels unbearably soul-sucking. But is it really that bad? Can I make it work a few more years and still pursue my creative interests, still have a five-year plan that will move me toward my creative goals? I see that I still have some work to do here...

Product and Process: I like the distinction Cameron makes between these two--they are not the same, and as artists we MUST be always in process or we're not growing in our craft. But I do think product is important, too. Yes, we must practice our art for the joy the process brings us, but the product is what communicates our vision and our passion to the world. Without a finished product--or a product as finished as possible--we are only talking to ourselves. That's okay sometimes, but in my opinion it's not enough. Art is meant to be shared.

Filling the Form: Another way to say "small steps." Something I need to remind myself when I feel overwhelmed. (Just realized that's been part of my problem this week--feeling overwhelmed. My "active addiction to anxiety"?) Me to my artist, right now at this moment: "You are doing enough. You are writing your morning pages. You are continuing to clarify your vision. You are making contacts. You are doing research. You are moving forward, even if sometimes only at a crawl. You are a work in progress. You are okay!"

EXERCISES, MORNING PAGES, TASKS

I found through the "Early Patterning" exercise that what I lacked in my early life was a sense of the possible. I did not know people who had made a successful life pursuing their muse. I had wonderful parents and educators who told me I could do anything, but I lacked a mentor to show me how. I think that still gets in my way...

I missed one day of morning pages--the first time since starting TAW in January! I did very few of the tasks this week, and spent less time on the one I did, "The Steps," than I needed to in order to get the information I needed. Perhaps that affected my experience of this week's work, too...

But enough about me--far too much, in fact! What about you? Did you have a more satisfying week than I did?

Next Week: Recovering a Sense of Compassion