The Artist's Way - Week 1

Embarking on summer of introspection

Hello, friends!

School is out, my summer vacation has begun, and here I am, as promised, setting out on The Artist’s Way, which will be my guide for a summer of introspection.

If you want to walk this path with me, here’s my basic game plan:

Each Sunday, I will be posting to my Substack with reflections on the week we just finished and thoughts on how I’ll be tackling the week ahead. As I currently envision these posts, I expect to share the roses and thorns of the week—what beauty and pain (frustration, annoyance, sorrow, etc) comes up as I work through the exercises—as well as my favorite quotes from the chapter for the upcoming week and meditations on/reactions to Cameron’s ideas. I’ll also include some discussion questions for you. I also plan to open a chat for anyone who wants to keep the conversation going that way!

Where I’m coming from

This week, of course, there’s no “how last week went,” as today we dive into week 1, so let me start by telling you a little bit of my history with Julia Cameron’s work. Way back in 2008, I picked up her book The Writing Diet. This was back when I was trying to be a writer and I was extremely worried that without constant vigilance, I would gain loads of weight and end up living with obesity. The book promised a one-two punch. It would get me writing and somehow, by writing, I’d get thin. Hooray! I was unfamiliar with The Artist’s Way, but the diet sounded perfect.

I no longer have my copy of that book, and I recall next to nothing of its advice. In fact, I remember only two things: Morning pages, the habit of writing three longhand, stream of consciousness pages first thing every morning, was key to the “diet,” and the book’s main premise was that if you fully engaged yourself in meaningful creative work, you would not overeat anymore and gradually you’d lose weight and get thin. Replace food with writing. Simple enough.

In the years since, I have certainly engaged deeply in a creative life. I’ve published three novels and two novellas, spent seven years as the managing editor of an annual literary magazine, kept various blogs and published occasional articles, poems, and short stories, and, more recently returned to my childhood passion of painting. I didn’t ever get especially thin, but the creativity piece I have covered.

And while the diet didn’t work out, morning pages did play a big role in my life for a long time. For around ten years after reading The Writing Diet, morning pages were an essential part of my daily routine. I didn’t write on loose pages that I kept in an envelope as Cameron advises in The Artist’s Way, somehow I missed that memo when reading The Writing Diet, but rather in Moleskine journals and cahiers. I developed a preference for unlined or dot-matrix pages, and for quite a few years I held the books horizontally because somewhere I heard using notebooks sideways was good for creative thinking. For a long time, I would have felt off kilter if I didn’t begin my day with those morning pages.

And then, for no reason I can really pinpoint, I just stopped. I was a person who kept morning pages, and then I wasn’t. Part of it, I think was a sense that I wasn’t making progress. Every day was the same old complaints, and it really was always complaints. In hindsight, maybe I was a bit depressed, because I don’t recall much joy in those pages.

These days my morning routine usually involves sketching for 15 minutes to a half hour before work. I take my coffee to my desk and draw or paint and then I feel ready to face the day. But lately I’ve started wondering if my almost-obsessive art-making is in fact, at least partly, a matter of avoidance.

What I love about making art is that I turn off the verbal part of brain, but what if that wordlessness is a sort of pacifier that I use to avoid thinking about things I really do need to think about. Like, for instance, why is it that since I finished my MFA in Creative Writing a couple of years ago, I haven’t been able to make myself do any real fiction writing?

So that’s why I am here, working through the Artist’s Way. That’s why I’ll be needing to tweak my morning routine and make way for morning pages. Maybe the morning pages I did before became monotonous because I had no guide or structure. I’m hoping the exercises in The Artist’s Way will help me avoid becoming a complaint factory this time around.

Thoughts after reading Week 1:

I’ll be honest, Cameron’s insistence on referring to those who embark on the Artist’s Way" as “blocked artists” annoyed the heck out of my in Chapter 1. I’m not blocked. I make A LOT of art. I’m not here to get unblocked as much as I am here to reflect on where I am now and where I hope to go next. I want to contemplate the work I make now and the work I would like to make so that I can articulate my artistic ideals and motivations clearly. And I want to think about how I feel about not writing fiction these days. Maybe it’s okay that my creative urges are pushing me toward visual art, but also, maybe it’s not. And I need to work through that. I think I’d prefer to call myself a “developing artist,” not a blocked one.

That annoyance aside, here are some things that stood out to me in Chapter 1:

Shadow Artists

I never got anything but support and encouragement from my family to indulge my creative passions. As a young child, my parents put me in after school art classes because they saw how much I loved drawing. I also took dance classes, wrote stories, sang songs. All of this was encouraged. And yet, somewhere along the line, I internalized the narrative that art is not the way you make a living. I came to believe I had to be practical and pursue a career that would provide a safe and stable income. I also came to believe I wasn’t good enough to ever become a real visual artist (no one was using the phrase “growth mindset” in the 1990s). So I decided to be an English teacher who used her summers off to write. I became a Shadow Artist.

Over the years, though, I am proud to say I have indeed learned to take myself seriously as an artist. It took a lot of deliberate affirmation to confidently call myself a writer, even after I had published a novel and earned some recognition, but I got really good at giving myself time and space to write, at prioritizing writing, which is one sure way to take oneself seriously. So when I got back into painting in 2021, it wasn’t hard to take myself seriously; I already had lots of practice.

I wonder, my friends, what about you? Are you a shadow artist? Where did the negative messages around pursuing art come from that pushed your artistic dreams off into the shadows?

Core Negative Beliefs

A few items in Cameron’s list leapt out at me as those that often jingle around in my head:

6. I don’t have good enough ideas.

11. I will do bad work and not know it and look like a fool.

13. I will never have any real money.

Over the years, probably other items on the list would have resonated more, but at this stage of the game, these are the ones that still plague me, especially numbers 11 and 13. In this age of social media, I spend more time than I care to admit worrying that I will look like a fool. That’s why I’m taking the summer off from most socials!

And as for money, I have largely made peace with the necessity of a day job and have even come to see it as a path to artistic freedom, but still, the dream of being a full time writer and artist persists… I just don’t want to starve for it.

Which core negative beliefs stood out most to you?

Creative Affirmations

(One thing to note: Cameron frames a lot of her practices through a Christian lens. I know that makes some people uncomfortable. Though I am a lifelong Catholic (with twelve years of Catholic school as a student, and twenty-three and counting as a teacher!), I am not a very religious person. That said, I do believe there is some divine power out there, and the more spiritual aspects of The Artist’s Way do not bother me like they do some people. If the religious language bothers you, substitute in whatever does work for you.)

Five of Cameron’s creative affirmations felt like mantras I would do well to adopt:

4. Creativity is the creator’s will for me.

6. I am allowed to nurture my artist.

8. Through the use of my creativity, I serve [the Divine].

18. I am willing to be of service through my creativity.

20. I am willing to use my creative talents.

I do think my purpose in life is to express myself creatively. It is an innate urge that has always been part of me. Sometimes I am amazed to learn that other people feel no compulsion to make things and share them!

While I think astrology is silly (but fun) and put no stock in it, even before I got a free human design chart, I know mine would say I’m a manifestor. That’s me. I manifest. This is how God made me, and the best thing I can do is fulfill that divine purpose. (In case you also think astrology is silly but fun and wondered what my sign is, I’m a Gemini. A Gemini manifestor. What a combo).

Which affirmations most resonate with you? Which do you feel you most need to hear?

How I’m approaching Week 1

I’m taking permission from Internet People Podcast, who recently did what they called “the bare minimum” artist’s way, and I’m setting reasonable goals and expectations!

1. Morning Pages - I will complete morning pages most days, which is to say at least 4 of the 7 days of week 1. I will do them on loose paper and file them in an envelope and not reread them, per Cameron’s instructions!

2. Artist Date - Heck yes, I’m going on an Artist Date. That’s what teacher summers are for.

3. Exercises 3 to 10 - I will use these as inspiration for morning pages. I won’t fret about doing each and every one. I will pick and choose.

4. I will do the end of chapter in check in next Saturday before reading Week 2.

That’s it! Keep it simple!

As I said before, I’ll be opening up a subscribe chat later today, so let’s stay in touch. Tell me you’re game plan and keep me posted on how it’s going. I’ll be your accountability buddy and you be mine!

Good luck, friends!

If you want to learn more about writing and art, you can visit my website www.dvmulligan.com.