the artist’s way

Only four more weeks in The Artist’s Way Collective! Today we being week 9 focusing on Recovering a Sense of Compassion. 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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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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For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction. We gobble the words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own. (pg. 87)

I hate this quote.

I agree with it, but I hate it.

It is me. I have known this to be true, but how could I argue with benefits of reading?

The reading deprivation this week has been challenging. And beautiful. I have come to see how not reading can be good for me. And bad for me.

Reading is where I tend to go when I’m not ready to engage. It is a movement away from having to accomplish or create. It feels meaningful, and it is, but sometimes it is meaningful avoidance.

But, I know it also fuel. Ideas spark when I read. My notes and to-do list grow even as flip through a book.

So, as I sit at the end of a week of starving my poor inner reader (save for a few pages each night at bedtime), I know it has been good. I have spent more time producing and creating this week. But it has also left me empty, and I have missed engaging with the ideas and stories of others. The question for me, whenever I reach for a book, is to ask why it is that I want to read in that moment. And then I can decide if it is the best choice for that time, for that place.

A few other ideas that have been present for me out of the reading this week:

• People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined. (pg. 82)
• Each of us in a unique, creative individual. But we often blur that uniqueness with sugar, alcohol, drugs, overwork, underplay, bad relations, toxic sex, underexercise, over-TV, undersleep — many and varied forms of junk food for the soul. (pg 85)

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I admire, and crave, the freedom my children have when it comes to expressing themselves. My oldest daughter doesn’t need to be called an artist to color, or a ballerina to dance. My younger daughter doesn’t need to be called a soloist to sing, or a comedian to crack a joke. Creatively expressing themselves is just a part of who they are.

Something happens as we grow older and we lose that innocence. To give myself the label of a designer or a writer is to invite my skeptic to speak. To name myself as an artist of any kind means that I have some kind of minimum standard I have to meet to qualify for that title. But I am the one that defines that minimum standard, and I usually place that standard just a notch or two above where I am.

So this week, I’ve been learning to tell that internal skeptic to shut up. If I want to say that I am a designer, then yes I am. If I want to say that I am a writer, then yes I am. If I want to say that I am a ballerina…well, I’m not going to go that far.

A few thoughts that have stuck with me from this week’s reading:

• To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. — Robert Louis Stevenson (pg. 43)
• You will discover the joy of practicing your creativity. The process, not the product, will become your focus. (pg. 44)
• Perhaps the greatest barrier for any of us as we look for an expanded life is our own deeply held skepticism. This might be called the secret doubt. (pg. 49)
• we need to gently set aside our sketpicism — for later use, if we need it — and when a weird idea or coincidence whizzes by, we gently nudge the door a little further open. (pg. 51)

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I’m trapped in the irony of this situation I have created for myself. Now that almost 20 others have taken up the invitation to work through the Artist’s Way together, I’m feeling the heat to be a good participant myself. Said irony is provided by this week’s topic — Recovering a Sense of Safety.

Dwelling in this irony reminds me of something that is too often true for me — the person creating this heat is me. The lack of safety I usually feel in expression and creativity comes, not from others, but from me. I have all sorts of conversations in my head about how others might hear or respond to what it is I haven’t yet said. (Case in point, I’m wondering even now how many times people will need to read that sentence to make any sense of it.) But the reality of those conversations is that, well, they happen in my head. For me, safety needs to come in caring a little less.

This reminds me of a quote by a hero of mine, Dr. Seuss, which I have mentioned before): Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

Speaking of quotes, here are some from the first reading that have been present in my thoughts this week:

• Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent. — C.G. Jung (pg. 26)
• Young lawyers may be pushed toward lawyering, a talky, word profession, or into medical school because they’re so smart. And so the child who is himself a born storyteller may be converted into a gifted therapist who gets his stories secondhand. (pg. 27)
• To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. — Joseph Chilton Pearce (pg. 29)
• Remember that in order to recover as an artists, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. (pg. 30)

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The Artist’s Way Collective begins one week from today. There is still time to join us! You can read the Intro and the How it Works posts for more information.

For those who are going to participate, I hope you can see this not as accountability, but encouragement. I don’t plan on being the Artist police. Please don’t feel the need to share your success rate with the morning pages or specify what other activities you did, although you can if you like. We can get the most from each other’s learnings and experiences. Share with us how you are growing, being challenged, or inspired.

Don’t forget to take some time to read the introductory chapters this. (That’s up to page 24 in the latest edition of the book.) They will help you get a handle on what is to come. As always, if you have any questions, please let me know. And once again, if you are going to join us, please consider a post on your own blog about it to help spread the word and let others know what is up.

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We have a little less than two weeks until The Artist’s Way Collective begins. There is still time to join us! You can read the Intro and the How it Works posts for more information.

Below is the schedule for what section we will be reading each week. The weekly hub will be posted early Monday morning each week, so it will work best for everyone to do the reading for the week over the weekend or early in the week. Then, during the rest of the week, you can do some of the exercises and reflect on your experiences.

• September 1 - Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety
• September 8 - Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity
• September 15 - Week 3: Recovering a Sense of Power
• September 22 - Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity
• September 29 - Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility
• October 6 - Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance
• October 13 - Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection
• October 20 - Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength
• October 27 - Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion
• November 3 - Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection
• November 10 - Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy
• November 17 - Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith

Don’t forget to take some time to read the introductory chapters prior to Week 1. (That’s up to page 24 in the latest edition of the book.) They will help you get a handle on what is to come. As always, if you have any questions, please let me know. And once again, if you are going to join us, please consider a post on your own blog about it to help spread the word and let others know what is up.

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I’m pleased with the response so far for The Artist’s Way Collective. We have participants from five states and two continents so far. With three weeks to go before we start, there is still plenty of time to join us. You can read the Intro post for more information.

The structure I have in mind is simple. We will work on a new section each week; I suggest you read the section on Sunday or Monday. Early on Monday, I will post a hub for that week. It will act as a reminder for the section we are on that week, but also as a collecting point for everyone’s thoughts.

As you work through the material for the week, share some of your own reflections on what you are experiencing and learning. You can post these as comments on the hub post. Or, if you have a blog of your own, post them on your blog and share a link to them in the hub comments. (If you want to start a blog just for this purpose, I would recommend Wordpress.com.)

I see no need to be rigid with this structure, so if we rework it during the process…well, that just sounds like creativity in action to me. I would also encourage the participants, and anyone else, to be reading and responding to the insights of others.

If you already have your book, take some time to read the introductory chapters up to Week 1. (That’s up to page 24 in the latest edition of the book.) They will help you get a handle on what is to come. As always, if you have any questions, please let me know. And once again, if you are going to join us, please consider a post on your own blog about it to help spread the word and let others know what is up.

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Three years ago, I worked my way through The Artist’s Way at the recommendation of a friend. The book make a strong impression on me. As I am entering into a new season of life, I’ve decided to go through it again this fall. I think it would be fun and meaningful (and beneficial!) to invite others to join me, and so I present The Artist’s Way Collective.

The Artist’s Way offers the premise that all of us are creative, and that being creative moves us toward personal health. It is not just written for those who are artists, but for anyone who has a need for creative expression…I happen to think that is everyone.

The Artist’s Way Collective will begin on September 1. Using the schedule prescribed in the book, it will go for twelve weeks, finishing up the week before Thanksgiving. I invite you to be a part of this with me. Each week, we will read the corresponding section (usually 15-20 pages), do the activities Cameron suggests, and then reflect about our experiences, whether here, or on your own blog.

I will share more specifics about how it will work in an upcoming post. But I wanted to present this initial invitation so you have time to think about participating and preparing to do so.. If you would like to join me, here is what you can do between now and then:

• Get a copy of the book - I will be using the latest printing — the tenth anniversary paperback. That’s the one we will consider as the standard if you want to use page numbers, etc. However, there are several older editions that can be found cheap in used bookstores if you want to go that route.
• Help spread the word - Please let others know you are going to be participating and invite them to join us too. Spread the word on your blog or on a convenient public restroom wall. (I’m just kidding. Don’t do that…it’s not cool.) Include a link to this post to help them find out more about it.
• Let me know - Leave a comment on this entry or use the Contact page to send me your name, hometown, and blog info (if you have one). I am putting together a list of everyone who will be participating on The Artist’s Way page and I’d like to include you too.

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