The Artist's Way: Week 1

 

Jon and I have just started Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a 12-week course for "creative recovery".

Last year, I made the mistake of reading the book all the way through in one shot. Some of the ideas stuck with me, but I don't feel I made much progress at all. This year, I'm taking it more seriously, so I will work through the exercises and jot down my thoughts weekly. (I'm also concurrently working on a book, the process of which I'll chronicle at the end.)

Shadow Artists

So, The Artist's Way week 1. This week we're meant to acknowledge the inner artist and gradually begin to wake it up.

The concept that stuck with me most is the Shadow Artist. A Shadow Artist is one who is drawn to artists but doesn't feel quite worthy of being one. So she finds herself in roles like marketing or production where she's close to the action, perhaps supporting a "real" artist (here used interchangeably with writer), but still on the outside looking in.

This story rings so true with me. I had always been drawn to writing but I never worked as one. Even while working in journalism companies, my job was in the peripheral sponsored content department. I thought it was obvious that this role was inferior, both morally and artistically, to journalism (that's why it pays so much better!) and I always hated it even though I was good at it.

But you know what? Turns out that quite a few ex-colleagues didn't share my view at all. They enjoyed their sponcon work, thank you very much, without the artist's complications like feeling ashamed about selling out.

Blurts

In Week 1 we're also meant to write down statements like "I am a successful and prolific writer" and observe the voices in our heads as they boo things like "that's rubbish!" and "you suck!".

These impediments to creative self-esteem, which Cameron calls "blurts", can often be traced to discouraging experiences early in life. Think of when your teacher or parent caught you doodling and told you to stop daydreaming, things like that.

Doing this exercise, I realised my issues aren't quite as straightforward. No one has ever discouraged me from being creative as a child; both of my parents were proud that I was creative, in fact.

No, my creative impediments revolved around work. This seems strange, because my creativity is valued professionally. So why does it feel like there's a blockage around my past employment and freelance paid work? Maybe, in using my gifts to benefit others commercially, I have repressed my own desires for too long. I feel childishly resentful about this. Why should I help them? There should be a Fair Use clause on my talent, dammit!

Sheesh, I must be one of those egotistic artists. (But isn't that how good art gets made anyway? If David Hume had written like an SEO bot instead of his cynical, funny self, would I have seen my own person reflected in a 18th century Scotsman?)

Week 1 check-in

We started The Artist's Way last Saturday so it hasn't been quite 1 week yet, but so far I have been faithfully writing my morning pages.

I already journal every morning, but it's been a long time since I went past 1-2 pages per entry, going beyond the surface of what we did, ate, bought, etc.

The first couple of mornings, I got writer's block. I have nothing more to write, I moaned on-page. Then surprising things happened. I started processing my relationship with my family while digging for things to write. I started changing the script.

Another thing that happened?

Book ideas started proliferating like crazy. I originally planned to write a how-to guide to financial independence in Singapore, taking the ideas from the US blogosphere and adapting them for the local context. This is quite a worthy project, actually. Nonetheless, it bores me and it embarrasses me to be writing something so boring.

As I got increasingly honest with myself in my morning pages, the book morphed into all kinds of manifestations, going from other-centric to increasingly self-centred. Haha.

During this period I've also been borrowing and speed-reading books like a maniac, as well as blasting through this Reedsy email course. This is my process for quickly exploring and testing the 23,587 ideas bouncing around in my head.

In the past 2 days, the rapid iteration seems to have slowed down. I finally committed to a new Google Doc and my brain has begun to take a massive shit in there. Well let's hope things continue moving.