And So We Begin

The Artist Way's Introduction and Basic Tools

I reread the introduction to Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way this week and was struck by how differently the concepts read to me now than they did when I first read the book more than twenty years ago.

The first time I read these pages I sat down cross-legged in the middle of the writer’s reference aisle in the middle of a B. Dalton book store in a mall (remember those?) and felt like I’d been thrown a life line.

I was in my early twenties at the tippy top of a career in journalism I didn’t really want (I’d dreamed of being a writer but also wanted to pay my bills, so I studied journalism in college thinking this was an excellent life hack—it was not). I certainly don’t remember noticing all the references to creativity as god the first time through—I was likely too taken with the idea of art as a birthright—but I notice it now. It strikes me how similar her thinking about a higher creative power is to the higher power you hear about in addiction circles, which makes a kind of sense when you realize that Cameron came to these practices as she was getting sober.

As a lapsed Catholic who these days believes most strongly in the connection between people, I’m not exactly ready to jump onto the creativity-as-god train, but I can definitely get behind this idea of “spiritual electricity” she feels in her work because on my best writing days, creativity truly does feel like a current—they don’t call it flow for nothing. That said, creative electricity is a rare thing for me. Cameron’s idea of creative flow doesn’t ring nearly as true for me as does Stephen King’s idea of writing as archeology, but even then where King talks about the writer unearthing the dinosaur skeleton of a story, it’s never like that for me. Oh, it’s archeological all right—I definitely feel like I’m unearthing something that’s already there—but for me I’m unearthing a bone fragment here, maybe a fibula there, and—oh, hey!—a skull. And if what I’ve unearthed is eventually revealed to be a giraffe my first draft almost always looks more like a platypus (because if any animal is the patron saint of first drafts it’s the hodgepodgery of the platypus).

Similarly, I don’t feel particularly moved by those ten basic principles she wants us to reread daily. I tried to boil them down to a more mantra-size chunk—for me that looks like:

Creativity is a gift.

Be open.

Move forward.

Closer, maybe, but it still certainly doesn’t move me to repeat it every day. Maybe instead of handing us principles, it might be more effective—or at least more moving—to invite us to write our own.

At a surrealism exhibit at the Tate gallery almost ten years ago, I made my way into interactive exhibit on automatism that invited visitors to grab a pencil and paper and try our hands at what sounded an awful lot like freewriting. The artist’s prayer that poured out brought tears to my eyes not just because it’s not just an invitation to write but also a reminder that writing is part of life but not life itself. That’s the prayer I need, but you may need something different. Or you may need nothing at all. :

Be brave, be free, be happy, be you.

Write and live and move and love and play and write some more.

Believe in you.

Believe in your vision.

Breathe and be at peace and free.

But as wary as I am of the spirituality in Cameron’s introductory pages and the didacticism of her ten principles, I do think her idea of the spiral path of creativity is a useful tool—creativity doesn’t create a straight path between points A and B but connects them with a spiral path that doubles back every time you move forward but—on balance—inches ever forward. How brilliant to incorporate these back sliding moments of doubt as a sign that the process is working. Suddenly when we stare at the utter shite of our first drafts and have the thought that they are, in fact, utter shite, we can remind ourselves that the messy draft is just part of the spiral path of creativity, and then get to the work of revising.

Now And, of course, she ends the opening to the book with the introduction of three tools: The Contract, Morning Pages, and The Artist Dates.

The Contract

Although I likely first bought and read this book in the fall of 1999, it looks like the first time I worked through it was just before my 25th birthday. Oh, how I would love to hug baby writer Cathy now. She was so lost and creatively alone, and though she’d continue to feel lost as she wrote the next five to six novels (depending on how you count), very soon she’d start meeting the very writer writer friends she can’t imagine her life without now.

MORNING PAGES

Ah, morning pages. The reason I’m doing this reread. I suppose I could have just quietly returned to morning pages, but why do that when you can sign up for twelve weeks of extra work, right?

Morning pages, Cameron says, can be thought of as a simple brain drain: Three longhand, stream-of-conscious pages, done first thing in the morning.

I call them pages because they’re specifically not supposed to be writing. Today was my second day back to them and both days I could do them in just about twenty minutes, which is quite the clip for me. I found that it helped to let myself write a bit sloppier than usually, a bit bigger. Not because it takes up more space—though that’s a happy side effect—but because it takes too much focus for me to write small.

The idea is to just keep your pen to the page and write faster than our inner critics can nag:

“Beyond the reach of the censor’s babble we will find out own quiet center, the place where we hear the still small voice that is at once our creator’s and our own.”

Creator talk aside, for me morning pages are like a phone line linked to my subconscious. I can cut through the societal should and get back to what I’m thinking about something, even if that thinking is the written equivalent of my arms thrown up in exasperated confusion.

Doe morning pages have to be longhand? Cameron says yes—the connection is stronger when the pen slows you down. Longhand is magical for me, but I have a friend who has typed them into a web program for years and swears that typing is both faster and more useful because she can search keywords in a way longhand writers just can’t. I’m going to stick with longhand, but anyone who’s gotten a certain kind of email from me knows I’m not above free associating with a keyboard. Maybe I’ll switch it up. I’ll keep you posted.

THE ARTIST DATES

The official Cameron line on artist date’s is this: Once a week for two hours do something fun—just you and your inner artist—to fill the well.

In theory this sounds delicious—two hours for anything?

In practice this is delicious—it’s heavenly to browse a bookstore as long as I want without my significant other asking if I’m ready to go yet. No? How about now? Still no? How about now?

In regular practice, though, the artist dates was always the first thing to go for me.

But rereading these pages now, I see I’ve been thinking about them all wrong. What if instead of thinking of artists dates as me time, I think of them as an investment in future me?

I was also thinking that although there’s something to be said about thinking of the Artist Date as a capital-W-capital-E Weekly Event—if it’s an event maybe I’ll finally make the time to pack my swim stuff, drive to the pool, swim, shower, and drive home—thinking of artist dates as events may have been overthinking things a bit. Rereading the introduction now, I noticed that Cameron includes simple pleasures on her list of potential dates. Movies. Cooking. Browsing in a thrift store.

So I’ll try to do a weekly artist date—what better excuse to sign up for aerial yoga classes, though don’t hold me to that before the new year—but I may think of them as playdates instead of artist dates. Less serious that way. Which makes me think it might be useful to think of playfulness in the same way I think about mindfulness. Just as my meditation practice extends beyond the cushion to invite me to stay grounded in the moment, a playfulness practice might invite me to choose play in any given moment.

Choosing play might look like opting to listen to my playlist of goof pop instead of a very serious book on tape.

Choosing play might look like detouring down one flight of steps to walk along the beach than on the sidewalk above the beach.

Choosing play might look like making a funny face at the child staring at you instead of ignoring her to keep reading. So, sure, I’ll do my artist playdates, but I’m also going to adopt play as a mindset because why the hell not, right?

Here’s a handy list of artist date’s with Julia Cameron’s block to get you thinking. And, if you’re willing to share, what artist dates have worked for you?

THE PLAN

I swear I won’t post at this length every week. My plan is to read through the chapter for the week over the weekend and post about it on Monday (I won’t do this Christmas weekend). I’m also planning to approach all those exercises with a high and low experiment—I’ll do both the exercise that draws me in the most and the one that repels me the most. You can do whatever you want, even if that’s just reading them or nothing at all. I’m trying to recapture the lightning in the bottle I felt the first time I read through the program, thus my own push. Let’s have fun with it. For me this is a two-way experiment. Recapturing lightning, yes, but also exploring a potential Substack idea. So thanks for playing along!