Confessions of a Recovering Shadow Artist

The Artist’s Way Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety

To paraphrase the message of Week One of The Artist’s Way—how can we expect to create when we’re licking our creative wounds? These wounds are personal to the individual, but Cameron says they tend to manifest in two important ways—shadow artists and negative beliefs.

SHADOW ARTISTS

The idea here is simple: Artists unsure of pursuing a life in their chosen art—either because of self-doubt or parental handwringing about making a living or cultural pressure to choose a “respectable” career—instead pursue careers adjacent to their chosen arts.

Would-be writers become lawyers (those briefs aren’t gonna write themselves).

Would-be painters become art teachers.

Would be screenwriters become critics.

Choosing shadow careers allows would-be artists to live an art-adjacent life without risking a full life in art. Shadow artists, Cameron says, “hear the distant piping of the dream but are unable to make their way through the cultural maze to find it.”

When I first read that line as a wannabe novelist working as an increasingly miserable journalist, it was revelatory. I studied journalism because I needed to make a living but there was no discernible heartbeat in the life I was leading. There certainly wasn’t any soul. The people around me didn’t get my dissatisfaction—I’d wanted to be a writer, and journalists write, so they didn’t see the problem. The problem was I wanted a life with a heartbeat. With every article I wrote profiling a person who done some amazing something, I felt an increasing urgency to start living my dreams instead of writing about people living theirs.

So I started to write.

On New Year’s Eve 2001 I made a resolution that whenever someone made and-what-do-you-do small talk, I’d say I’m a writer instead of I’m an editor at a magazine. The amount of people who grinned and said, “me, too” floored me, and I learned an important lesson in the power of small choices.

Deciding to introduce myself as a writer was  small choice that yielded big friendships.

Getting up early to write before work was a small choice that yielded a big habit.

Deciding that my writing mattered was a tiny choice that yielded a writing life I and still cherishing twenty-two years later.

BLURTS

Week One in The Artist’s Way is also where Cameron encourages us to think of our inner artist as a child who needs nurturing and protecting, namely in the form of permission to let early artistic efforts be the steaming piles of poo they need to be (I’m paraphrasing). Twenty-two years later I’m here to tell you my first drafts are still steaming piles of poo (but I’ve made my peace with it because #WritingIsRewriting)!  

Namely, though the artist child needs protecting from our negative core beliefs that manifest as “blurts” from our inner critics. If the longing to write is a whisper, then the blurts of the inner critic are a hiss.

This sucks!

Why bother?

And the particularly insidious blurt that’s been hissing thorough my brain as I draft this newsletter:

Real writers writersss don’t take twenty-two yearssss (and counting) to publish a book!

Cameron recommends we rewrite our blurts into affirmations. For example, I might take the what-do-you-have-to-show-for-your-time blurt above and rewrite it to say, well, I could fill pages of everything I’ve got to show for twenty-two years of writing, but for purposes of brevity I’ll go with what I said above:

I have a writing life I cherish.

WEEK ONE TASKS & CHECK INS

TASKS—Cameron lists morning pages and artist dates as tasks this week, so given that I’ve only put myself on the hook for two tasks a week , I could brush my hands and call week one done. That said, given that I’m at a professional crossroads, I’m eyeballing the imaginary lives exercise to see what pops up. . It might also be interesting to turn the thank-you letter into a letter to myself detailing all the things I’m grateful for in twenty-two years of writing. Which exercises appeal to you?

CHECK-IN—If you started (or restarted) the morning pages, how did it feel to get back to them? I did seven out of seven days and was shocked by how quickly my intuitive self got switched on. How about you?

What about your artist dates. I made shortbread and then put up the Christmas tree. How about you?

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