The Artist's Way: An Introduction

For as long as I can remember, I'd always wanted to be a writer. I dreamed for the day where every day I had the ability to inhabit local coffeeshops in whatever city I lived in on a daily basis to write and not have to work a mundane, exhausting job. I still dream for this day to come. But, in the meantime, I've had no choice but to firmly plant at least one foot on the pavement of reality. Sometimes, though, that reality really really sucks.

I've spent the last several years and the three cities that I've lived in partaking in sporadic spurts of immense creativity poring out of my body and soul. Recently, however, I've felt that I've lost my motivation to create. I know in my heart that I am capable of extensive productivity in the frontier of creativity, but my mind, with its occasional bouts of neuroticism, I'm creatively useless and uninspired. I've felt that my recent attempts at creatively have not been aesthetically appealed, repetitive, and monotonous in nature. I've rationalized that my lack of confidence in my writing ability is the result of laziness and lack of motivation. There's a part of me which believes that recent bouts of work exhaustion have also played a factor in my lackadaisical approach to recent creative efforts.

My frustration with these issues came up in a conversation I had last fall with my dear friend in Olympia, Ashley. She suggested that I checked out a book that she's used to help her with channeling her creativity. The book she recommended, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, proved to be extremely helpful to her in the recovery of creative energy. Based on her recommendation, I purchased this book on a rainy afternoon around Thanksgiving. Sure, I will try it, I said to myself, without much hesitation. At this point, I'm open to just about anything.

Divided into twelve chapters, The Artist's Way focuses on different characteristics that are most often lacking in an artist's consciousness as the artist struggles to maintain his/her creative motivations. These deficiencies most often lead to creative blockage. These focal areas are:

Week 1 Recovering a sense of safety
Week 2 Recovering a sense of identity
Week 3 Recovering a sense of power
Week 4 Recovering a sense of integrity
Week 5 Recovering a sense of possibility
Week 6 Recovering a sense of abundance
Week 7 Recovering a sense of connection
Week 8 Recovering a sense of strength
Week 9 Recovering a sense of compassion
Week 10 Recovering a sense of self-protection
Week 11 Recovering a sense of autonomy
Week 12 Recovering a sense of faith

The exercises in the end of each chapter allow the participant to place the concepts presented into context, with respect to how they apply to the participant's creative situation. In addition to these exercises, Ms. Cameron also presents two other activities that should be incorporated into the recovery process.

Activity number one, the Morning Pages, ideally takes place every day, where the participant is asked to write three pages of writing in the form of stream-of-consciousness. The idea is to write whatever comes to mind, unabridged and uncensored, without much thought put into it. When the Morning Pages are completed each day, the participant is then asked to put the writing away and not look at it again. The primary purpose of this activity is to empty the brain of extraneous thoughts, feelings, and emotions that may be festering inside, causing brain drain and potentially blocking the creative flow.

Activity number two, the Artist Date, asks the participant to set aside a couple hours once a week to take the "artist child" in you out on a date, just you and your "artist child." No one else is allowed to accompany the participant. The Artist Date potentially creates new sources of inspiration and motivation for the artist to prosper.

I went through this book for the first time earlier this year. The ideas Julia expressed throughout this book were right on the ball, aiding in the development and maintenance of my creativity. However, towards the end of the book, I discovered that even though I was reading the book on a weekly basis, I wasn't actively participating in the creative recovery process. To further exacerbate the problem, the toll work has taken on me physically and mentally in recent weeks didn't make the recovery any easier. In particular, when the subject of addictions (such as workaholism) presented itself, the light dawned on me. I've fallen prey to the addiction of workaholism, although, it wasn't the act of constantly working that was the issue for me. In reality, the truth was, I was running myself down to the ground, carrying the weight of what I perceived to be the expectations of my superiors as well as trying to keep up with the transitional period we're going through at the law firm.

Shortly after finishing this book, an idea came to me. This blog had been neglected by me since the end of January. Up until recently, this blog felt boring and uninspired. Then, I thought, wait a minute. Why don't I go through the Artist's Way a second time while documenting the process using the blog. So, with that in mind, I decided to incorporate the Artist's Way into my blog.

Here's how this will work. At the beginning of each week I will introduce each chapter and summarize the concepts raised in the chapter. Then, over the course of the week, I'd complete the exercises in the book as blog entries as well as document my artist's date for the week. At the end of the week, there will be a Check-In entry, where I'm asked a few questions to summarize what happened over the course of the week. Since I'm in the middle of the first week, I'll combine the Check-In and the Chapter summary in the same entry.