About two weeks ago, I started
reading a book my son had lent me. It’s called The Artist’s Way, and it was written by Julia
Cameron, in 1994. The by-line is “A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self”.
The book is a 12-week programme/course,
aimed at exactly what the by-line says. There are exercises for each week, with
the two main exercises throughout the course being what the author calls the ‘’morning pages’’ and ‘’artist’s
date night’’.
I am currently in Week 2, on Day
11 since I started, and I’m really into this programme. Let me tell you about
the two main exercises.
1.
Morning pages
The idea is to do, by hand,
three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, every morning. I’ve found the
writing really interesting (I love writing), but I haven’t always written in
the morning. I write most mornings, but on a few days I’ve written in the evenings,
because my mornings were too rushed. Needless to say, the practice necessitates
other forms of discipline as well, like waking up early enough to write. As
someone who struggles with conformity, I’ve simply renamed them my Daily Pages,
because I’m committed to writing every day – I just can’t guarantee mornings. 😊
It’s not a writing exercise for
drafting a near-perfect article. It’s nothing like that. In fact, she says that
if you can’t think of anything to write, just fill your pages with “I can’t
think of anything to write.”
So what do I write? I write
whatever’s on my mind. I have no problem coming up with stuff to write, and I’m
starting to find three pages too few! I enjoy the writing, and look forward to it
every single day.
In the beginning, I wrote
about what was bothering me, so I filled the three pages basically whingeing
about my life. Then I realised that that
was a total waste of my time – it made no sense to look so forward to writing, and
then to sit down and write a bunch of complaints. I continued to write
complaints, but I let them take up less and less space every day, until I
became fired up about my new goals, my thoughts about the future, and started
coming up with ideas for how I could improve the areas of my life I wasn’t
happy with. You see? Creativity is not just about painting, dancing, singing,
etc. – it’s about thinking differently to how you do when you’re ‘stuck’.
So I’m loving the writing, and
I’ve had an epiphany every few days. Had I not been writing in such a routine
way, I might not have had those epiphanies. I use those aha moments to infuse a
new perspective into my daily life, and to help me with my plans for the
future. In a relatively short space of time, I’ve become more accepting of
certain things, but also more certain about what I just cannot see myself
putting up with for much longer. In other words, the writing sessions have given
me greater clarity.
I’ve always believed that my
life worked best when I had certain routines in place – but they mustn’t be
externally-imposed; I have to set them up and I have to be in control of them.
So a routine that involves any of my passions – music, writing, dancing (or swimming,
which I haven’t done for over six years!) – is something that will always make
me feel better about life. Knowing that this daily writing, for 12 weeks, has caused
revolutionary shifts in other people’s lives, and got them to make sweeping
changes, inspires me and piques my curiosity. I’m so excited to see how I’ll
feel as I progress through the weeks. So
far, so very good.
2.
Artist date night
Whereas the writing is a daily
exercise, the artist date night is a weekly practice. You set aside one evening
per week where you take yourself on a date, aimed at stimulating your
creativity. It can be anything – a walk in the park, a visit to an art gallery,
a bike ride through beautiful terrain, a movie, a meal, a live music
performance, etc. I decided that what I really wanted to do was spend
uninterrupted time playing my guitar. More specifically, to spend time playing and
singing my original songs, and to work on them a bit more. I decided to use the
artist date night to reconnect with myself as a songwriter – to find my old
songs, tweak them a bit, see how I could incorporate them into my performances,
and hopefully be inspired to write new ones.
When I think about my body of compositions,
I know there’s so much admin I have to do. Besides getting all the songs copyrighted,
I need to make basic recordings, just to have audio versions of them all. Then I need to type up the lyrics of them all,
as most are still handwritten. In some cases, I still have the original rough,
scribbly pages!
Even though I have recorded quite
a few of my songs – some at concerts and some in a studio – I have a whole lot
more to do. I shouldn’t wait.
I decided my night would be a
Thursday, and last week was the first one. This week, I needed to shift my
night. Actually, ….. the way I spent tonight could qualify as an artist date night – I did my written
reflections of Week 1, and I’ve typed this blog post. I just didn’t get time to
play my guitar.
It’s time for me to wind down
for the night, as it’s past 11pm. The quality of one’s sleep has a profound
impact on the next day.
It’s funny how we fight routines,
even when we know how beneficial they are. As I always say, about habits people
say they want break: You’ll keep doing them until you stop doing them. You’ll know when
it’s time.
Of course, I only know this
from experience. The most important life lessons I’ve learnt the hard way –
through making the mistakes and having to face the consequences.
Here’s to the next 10 and a
half weeks of The Artist’s Way. I’ll write updates as I go along.
