artist’s way collective

Only three more weeks in The Artist’s Way Collective! Today we being week 9 focusing on Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. (If you aren’t participating, feel free to share your reactions too.) If you are using your blog to process your experiences, please leave us a link.

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I’m posting my reflections earlier this week because some of this material has been sticking with me a lot. To mix it up, allow me to offer a few quotes from the chapter that captured, and troubled, me:

• The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all. (pg 152)
• Over any extended period of time, being an artist requires enthusiasm more than 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. (pg 153)
• We’re more comfortable being a victim of artist’s block than risking having to consistently be productive and healthy. (pg 154)

I also began reading The Now Habit, by Neil Fiore, this week. Much of what he says goes along with Cameron’s thoughts, so here are a few of his ideas to extend your thoughts about the theme this week:

• People don’t procrastinate just to be ornery or because they’re irrational. They procrastinate because it makes sense, given how vulnerable they feel to criticism, failure, and their own perfectionism. (pg 3)
• we procrastinate when we fear a threat to our sense of worth and independence. (pg 15)
• procrastination is not a character defect; rather, it is an attempt — albeit an unsatisfactory one — at coping with the often incapacitating fear of having our worth held up for judgment. (pg 16)
• When we identify our worth with our work (”I am what I do”) we naturally are reluctant to face challenges and take risks without self-protective defenses. If you believe that a judgment of your work is a judgment of yourself, then perfectionism, self-criticism, and procrastination are necessary forms of protection. (pg 24)

I imagine I’ll have more response to share from The Now Habit in the future, but it seemed good to share the thoughts above alongside The Artist’s Way this week.

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This week has been filled with one of life’s creative blockades — half of our family has been sick. So, I don’t have time to offer a reflection. But for the sake of consistency, here are a few quotes from the chapter I found helpful:

• “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” - Albert Einstein (pg 131)
• For the artist, to become overly cerebral is to become crippled. This is not to say that artists lack rigor; rather that artistic rigor is grounded differently than intellectual life usually admits. (pg 132)
• “Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.” - Claude Bernard (pg 134)
• Art is the act of structuring time. (pg 134)
• The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist. The beginner’s humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. (pg 140)
• Blocked creatives like to think they are looking at changing their whole life in one fell swoop. This form of grandiosity is very often its own undoing. By setting the jumps too high and making the price tag too great, the recovering artist sets defeat in motion. (pg 141)
• Take one small daily action instead of indulging in the big questions. When we allow ourselves to wallow in the big questions, we fail to find the small answers. (pg 143)

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Could it be possible that The Artist’s Way Collective is starting to draw near to the home stretch?

Today we being week 8 focusing on Recovering a Sense of Strength. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. (If you aren’t participating, feel free to share your reactions too.) If you are using your blog to process your experiences, please leave us a link.

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I haven’t posted any reflections on The Artist’s Way for the last few weeks. Please don’t tell anyone.

Like others, my interest has looked like a taffy machine moving in and out of engagement with the process. Some of the reflections from the reading this week have been helpful to me, especially when it comes to the daily pages. I’ve been pretty good about doing the daily pages (aka morning pages), but they have become tedious at times as we have moved through the weeks. (Don’t even get me started about how many times my daily pages have been filled with thoughts about doing the daily pages.)

This morning, especially, I was faced with the reality that I just didn’t want to do them. They seemed like another thing to check off my to-do list, and there are plenty of others things on there that seem more productive. But as I was at work on them, something clicked for me. Now this might be obvious to you, but it was a realization I needed to come to. I have been focused on just trying to fill the page. My whole goal was to get to the end of the alloted space.

As Cameron says in the first quote below, I was going the wrong direction. Rather than try to fill the page, the point is to empty the soul, to explore the mind. There is plenty going on in my heart and head to fill the page and more. The only thing that is expected of me in the process is to serve as the relay from soul to page.

Of course, you already knew all of this, but things for humoring me. Here are some thoughts I especially liked from the reading this week:

• Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite — getting something down. (pg. 117)
• For the perfectionist, there are no first drafts, rough sketches, warm-up exercises. Every draft is meant to be final, perfect, set in stone. (pg 120)
• We deny that in order to do something well we must first be willing to do it badly. (pg. 121)
• To put it differently, very often a risk is worth taking simply for the sake of taking it. … Selecting a challenge and meeting it creates a sense of self-empowerment that becomes the ground for further successful challenges. (pg 123)
• My jealousy had actually been a mask for my fear of doing something I really wanted to do but was not yet brave enough to take action toward. (pg 123)
• I don’t have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It’s what you with it that counts. — Martin Ritt (pg 125)

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Take a deep breath…The Artist’s Way Collective is past the halfway point. Today we being week 7 focusing on Recovering a Sense of Connection. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. (If you aren’t participating, feel free to share your reactions too.) If you are using your blog to process your experiences, please leave us a link.

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The Artist’s Way Collective is nearing the halfway point as we begin week 6 today. I’ve stuck with it, but I’ve lost a little steam. It appears I might not be the only one as the general activity has slowed down this past week, so I thought it would be good for a check in. Who is still with us, and how has the experience been overall?

Of course, you can also share your thoughts for week 6. This week focuses on Recovering a Sense of Abundance. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. (If you aren’t participating, feel free to share your reactions too.) If you are using your blog to process your experiences, please leave us a link.

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The Artist’s Way Collective begins week 5 today. This week focuses on Recovering a Sense of Possibility.

For those who are participating with us, you can share your thoughts in the comments below. (If you aren’t participating, feel free to share your reactions too.) If you are using your blog to process your experiences, please leave us a link.

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The Artist’s Way Collective begins week 4 today. This week focuses on Recovering a Sense of Integrity.

For those who are participating with us, you can share your thoughts in the comments below. (If you aren’t participating, feel free to share your reactions too.) If you are using your blog to process your experiences, please leave us a link.

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