My Half-Hearted Attempt to Do The Artist's Way Again This Year--and Why It's Helping
I think I first worked through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron not long after her book came out. My pages are marked with thoughts and goals from 1996, if you can believe it. Since then, I’d joined cohorts and formed groups of friends who ran through the course, but it’s been a least a decade since I tried her program.
I do agree that writers—and all creative artists—need resets. We get into a slump where we repeat what we know, or we stop producing anything at all. Usually, underneath that is some fear of the next step, the new skill we need to embrace. I’ve used Cameron’s Morning Pages and Artist’s Dates over the years, when I reach that passage in my writing life. Usually it works well.
This time, I had to adapt her ideas and also those of Amie McNee to create a reset that actually worked for me where I am right now.
Some writers say, Just begin. That the only thing you need to do is not write (Anne Lamott). Or take five minutes anywhere, anytime, and just write (Jami Attenberg). I agree. That’s what it takes. But sometimes, I need to regain the love first, even a little bit. Here’s how I did it during these past weeks.
Distractions!
One of the beautiful things about a creative reset is that it asks us to take a serious look at the distractions in our lives and filter them out, let what we really want to create or achieve take their place.
And there are so many distractions—right now, with the world chaos, I struggle to focus on what I want to get done in a day. It used to be a lot easier, somehow. It takes grit and determination and letting go to do my art.
So a reset is great. It’s like a kind of diet.
Cameron uses a series of exercises in The Artist’s Way to train the focus away from the world and back to what we really want to create. So I decided to start Morning Pages again and see if that small step might help me filter out all the chaos and get back to my art more fully.
Morning Pages do work
I’m not new to Julia Cameron’s work. I’ve read most of her books, I’ve led Artist’s Way classes, I’ve worked the program myself many times, as I said above. Each time, I got renewal. But the most change came from the first go-around back in the 90s. It prepared me for a complete revolution of my writing and art life because four years later, I was diagnosed with serious breast cancer.
After treatment, I took an equally serious look at my life on all levels. I was a successful writer, well paid for my writing, but dried up inside. I hadn’t painted in decades, even though art was my first love. So I used the Morning Pages and Artist Dates to review my dreams and desires, as a creative person.
Cameron’s exercises and routine were a huge help back then. Not long after, I moved from food journalism to fiction and began painting again. Two wins.
Now I began writing Morning Pages each day when I usually journaled. I wrote easily for about a page and a half but it felt like walking through mud many days. One morning I pushed myself past that mark to three full pages, and the gold came through. I know why Cameron suggests that much writing—it takes a while for a stuck artist to plow through all the debris and doubts.
I had several weeks of great stuff coming in, new ideas for art and writing. I got energy to get to my studio more often. I began trying Artist Dates (this was right before the holidays) and I told myself I was just looking for unusual gifts for others on these outings. Places I’d wanted to visit, even in my own town, but never let myself.
So, OK, these two exercises did help me break through. But why was I slumped again by mid-February?
Two-week reset
Amie McNee’s got some new books coming out with The Pound Project about her belief that artists need to make art, but instead we slowly suffocate ourselves with our jobs and non-art lives. I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter her first book: We Need Your Art. I got a copy for Christmas and finally picked it up.
I was slowing down with the Morning Pages by then, back to my page and a half and not much new stuff coming through. I hadn’t been on an artist date in weeks.
But McNee’s idea of a two-week reset felt like something I could try.
She has a wonderful idea of limits, and how they serve the artist who is learning to make art again. Commit to a very low minimum each day for two weeks. Like, 15 minutes. Or a half hour. Then cut that in half. And do it.
I decided I could do half an hour cut in half. I’d practice her reset by going to my painting studio every day for 15 minutes. It seemed ridiculous.
Limits make it all work
By making the goal so inconsequential, the total time commitment so low, I was able to achieve it.
The first day I tried it, I just puttered around, sorting things. Being in the art space.
The next day, I began sorting through paintings I’d started and not finished. I put potential “starts” in a pile.
The third day, I went through the pile and chose three studies of rocks on a shoreline. I put them up on two easels and a wall shelf to look at them.
The fourth day, I took my very dark pastel sticks and began intensifying the contrasts between the background and the rocks.
All of this took place in 15 minute sessions, no more. I made myself leave after 15 minutes. (I think this is a secret too—you aren’t finishing anything. More about this below.)
The fifth day, when I walked into the studio and saw what I’d painted the day before, I got so excited. More ideas came. I did the same value contrasts on the other two studies. Loved it.
Hated having to leave after 15 minutes.
Creating a vacuum
There’s a wonderful maxim from Ernest Hemingway: Stop when it’s going good. I also remember an exercise in Stephen King’s book On Writing that you may know well. He recommends stopping your writing in the middle of a sentence, or at least the middle of a thought. In other words, don’t wrap things up. Leave a vacuum that can get filled overnight, to pull you back to the page.
McNee’s reset worked like that for me. Each time I left midway through my work, whether on the page or the canvas, I could hardly stand not “finishing.” The angst made this sort of vacuum inside, an emptiness that got filled between sessions.
I couldn’t wait to get back to it.
Other writers have championed this method, and I think artists do it too. The concept of linkage, where you’re creating a space for the next work session by leaving something undone.
Circling back to Morning Pages
Cameron’s approach is so valuable for the blocked creative person. Once the creativity is flowing—really flowing—I don’t find the need for as much processing in Morning Pages or as many new images and ideas as I gain from Artist’s Dates.
But when the tumult of the world gets crazy, as it has for me these past weeks, I find myself using her tools more regularly. I have more to sift through before I get to the spark of what I want to do.
The Morning Pages are the way I hear myself. I hear what I want to create.
The two-week reset was how I got to it again.
Your weekly writing exercise
Try one of these methods this weekend, if you feel blocked or if you’re so overwhelmed by the world noise that you can’t hear yourself.
Write three pages of thoughts, feelings, ideas. Let it empty you. Push to that third page, which is where the gold is. Don’t reread these—they are a mind dump. See if you get clearer on what you want to create, after the mind is emptied.
Commit to a week of 15 minutes a day of art in some form. Create, without worrying about finishing anything. Walk away after 15 minutes. See if you can develop that vacuum that really nourishes.
Check out Julia Cameron and Amie McNee’s books with the links above.
Share your thoughts about creative resets, your experience with The Artist’s Way or McNee’s creative reset, or anything else below.Photo by Ramzi Belaidi on Unsplash