The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron

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.