The Artist's Way: Week 11

     

Just finished the penultimate week of The Artist's Way and now I'm moving on to the last. I'm SO excited to have my life back. I love this course, don't get me wrong, but writing 3 pages each morning while Meowcifer screams in the background and the bunnies clamour to be fed is no joke.

By the way, I discovered something amazing this week. Did you know you can use Google Lens to turn handwritten words into text!?!?!? Here is a walkthrough. I usually write stuff in longhand, and it's been such a pain to type things up because then Editor Mode kicks in and I often end up rewriting extensively. So this week, I've used Google Lens to transcribe my paper notes. 

Acceptance & artistic success

After 11 weeks of work, we should be close to acceptance (of the artist within), or so Julia Cameron hopes. 

Part of this process includes accepting the impact that the artist identity has on the other parts of your life. To be an artist is also have weird taste sometimes, as well as "to allow sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards." In other words, you're not normal and that's okay.

At some point, an artist may enjoy "success". Which isn't necessarily a good thing. With success comes, often, the chase for further success and/or the compulsion to creating more work using the same hit formula. Success = illusory safety = BAD!

Cameron cautions the budding artist against sacrificing artistic creativity and spontaneity in the pursuit of success. We mustn't end up playing too safe; we must keep our freedom to do weird shit, take risks.

"The trick," (and here she crosses into personal finance territory), "is not to mortgage the future too heavily. In the house in the Hamptons costs two years of creative misery cranking out a promised project just for cash, that house is an expensive luxury."

And that's where it all goes back to self-acceptance. Because the rest of the world is not going to see an issue with sticking to a hit formula and getting paid handsomely for it. But, as an artist, you will.

The Zen of sports

Cameron moves on to something quite timely for me, given the end-of-year hibernation period... the importance of exercise.

For artists are cerebral beings. We often live in our heads, whether in the joy and flow of writing or the agonising battle with the inner critic. Exercise, therefore, is a much-needed method to move the self out of the head and into the body.

As the goal isn't physical fitness but artistic well-being, just 20 minutes a day of movement a day will do, says Cameron. It doesn't even matter what kind of exercise it is as long as it lets us "connect to a world outside of us, to lose the obsessive self-focus of self-exploration — and simply explore."

Acceptance, once again, is necessary. We must accept that, as artists, our relationship with exercise may be different from a regular person's, and that part of our daily activity has to be physical.

The ways I've changed

One of the exercises for the week is to inventory the ways you've changed since the beginning of The Artist's Way. I thought I'd share mine.

I've become a LOT less pragmatic. I used to view everything through a utilitarian/instrumental lens by default, but now I do it a lot less.

I'm now willing to follow inexplicable attractions. I have stopped trying to understand or talk myself out of my more peculiar whims. These days I simply indulge myself. Often, the strange urge is a way to reconnect with a past self, a myth, or even a piece of art or idea. Some of my recent obsessions include: Bovril (British stoicism), baked beans (Trainspotting's Renton stocking up on canned goods for going cold turkey), and a Venti peppermint mocha (The Love Hypothesis' Olive Smith's obsession with extra-sugary, extra-fatty drinks).

I have made peace with the fact that I'm never going to be moved by the "elegiac prose" or "insight into the human condition" of most literary fiction. I would rather read about cat shit, pimples, and bad sex. To me, at least, the profane is sacred.

I now believe that money will flow in as needed. This is a big one.

I have moved on from my past life as a relatively successful full-time writer. I have begun to explore my own voice and discover what I genuinely like.

I am challenging entrenched self-limiting beliefs. For example, I always believed I'm "not good with people" but I have turned out to be decent at customer service. (Who would've thought!??)

Moving forward, I think I'll become increasingly confident about myself as I try more new, scary things. I'll have more playfulness and fun in my life, learn to laugh at myself. Finally, I'll approach life with fewer expectations, more curiosity and openness.

Week 11 check-in

Morning pages: 7/7

Artist date: All of Saturday. I bought this and spent the afternoon reading a huge book about books and coming up with a home improvement plan.

Issues this week: Watching my friend deal with Stage 4 cancer. I'll probably write about that at some point.