All You Need Is (Self) Love!
The Artist’s Way Week Three: Recovering a Sense of Power
If week two of the The Artist’s Way was about protecting our artist selves from external forces eroding us, week three is about protecting our artist selves from the inner horsemen of the writerly apocalypse—anger, fear, shame, and self doubt. At the risk of grossly over-simplifying a chapter that so compassionately explores the ugly emotional underbelly of the artistic life that all of us feel but so few of us talk about, our best weapon against these emotional horsemen is you-had-the-power-all-along simple: Be kind to yourself.
Anger as a Map
Anger isn’t the enemy, Cameron says, it’s a map.
“Anger points the way, not just the finger. … We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us.
In other words, your anger is telling you want you really, really want, so pay attention! You’re not so much angry at that shiny writer who put out her tenth book in ten years as you are angry at yourself for not finishing the one book you’ve been writing for ten years, so commit to finishing your book.
Synchronicity as blessing and curse
According to Cameron, clear intentions catch the attention of “an intelligent and responsive universe, acting and reacting in our own interests.”
The minute you say you commit to writing a novel set in an orangutan sanctuary, say, you stumble upon a documentary about just such a sanctuary in Borneo.
Carl Jung called these creative coincidences synchronicity, but though it feels like magic, it’s really just the natural byproduct of focused attention. If you've just fully committed to your novel about orangutans, you’re much more likely to spot a book in a bookstore related to that topic. I love the magic of the idea of an intelligent and responsive universe, but I believe the universe in question is the universe of our minds—if you’ve got orangutans on the brain, you’re more likely to spot references to them others might not even notice.
But as magical as such creative coincidences can be, Cameron says they can wreck havoc on the receiver. When faced with a green light from the universe, suddenly we’re afraid to start—what if I fail?—or ashamed about even wanting to start—what self-respecting adult is this obsessed with fuzzy orange primates?—or full of self doubt—because why did I ever think there ever would be an audience for an orangutan odyssey??
Be kind. Keep working. Repeat indefinitely.
The answer for all of these obstacles is a three-part process:
Be kind to yourself—Take care of your body by exercising, sleeping, and eating healthy food. Take care of your mind by responding to harsh self talk with the same gentle encouragement you’d offer a friend. Surround yourself with people you trust. Don’t share your work too early. And take breaks to fill the well, but…
Keep working—Feel afraid of your story? Keep writing. Got some harsh criticism? Keep writing. Feeling a mean case of the why-bothers? Keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing.
Repeat indefinitely—Be kind. Keep working. Repeat. Be kind. Keep working. Repeat.
Annoyingly simple, isn’t it?
It’s tough to argue that self kindness and regular writing are foundational tools in the wise writer’s toolbox, and yet we’ve all had those days where writing in the face of self doubt feels impossible. Like our writing is a tea kettle we absolutely need to take off the burner to make the whining stop.
I don’t think it’s possible to never doubt ourselves.
Humans feel a deeply wired need to connect, and self-doubt is an evolutionary gut check that forces us to make sure our actions won’t get us shunned by our clans. Because isn’t that what all creative self doubt really boils down to?
They won’t understand this.
They won’t buy this.
They’ll think this novel is fluff.
Whether they is our writing groups or our family or our eventual readers, we’re terrified of being pushed away from our clan’s fire. Self doubt, then, is as hardwired as an adrenaline spike when you’re in danger—it’s not going anywhere, so we have to work around it.
On a day our self doubt is a particularly shrill tea kettle we may not have the bandwidth to spend hours revising a scene, but can we commit to five minutes? Maybe reread the sticky widget chapter and take notes on what we might change when we sit down next time? Might that five minutes turn into ten? Or—dare we hope—fifteen?
Five minutes is nothing, you say, but if we develop a habit of making micro progress each time we doubt ourselves, the kettle may not scream quite so loudly next time. So, even though self doubt is inevitable, impotence in the face of that self-doubt is a choice. And the bald truth is if we want the artist within to be an artist without, we have to choose bravery over impotence most of the time.
WEEK THREE TASKS & CHECK INS
TASKS—I’m going to be honest here. I leave tomorrow for a week away, so I’m unlikely to be as diligent with the tasks as I might be on another week. That said, I do like the image of the inner compass in task 7—the idea of listening to the insights of our inner artist. And given that we’re bearing down on the turn of the calendar year, I think the habit inventory of task 4 might lead to a bumper crop of possible New Year’s resolutions. Which tasks appeal to you?
CHECK-IN—Anyone else starting to have a bauble on the morning pages front? I skipped them the morning I had a house guest, and the next day I really had to talk myself into giving 20 to 30 minutes of my writing time to morning pages—I just wanted to go straight to work on the novel. I think it’s important to remember that Cameron did warn us that writers have the toughest time with morning pages because they treat them like writing instead of a brain dump. Perhaps if I think of it not as writing morning pages but as a written meditation? We’ll see how it goes in the new year.
How about you?