The Artist's Way: Week One Roundup

This is the end of my first week of The Artist's Way (TAW from now on). (You can read about the basics of TAW here.) It’s been a really interesting experience so far. Even though I’ve been doing morning pages all summer, somehow doing them in combination with the tasks set out for this week led to much deeper insights than I was having during the summer. For instance, this week we were supposed to identify our inner critics, censors, and enemies, those usually inaudible voices in our heads that keep us from being who we are and who we want to be. This exercise takes us back in time to our early conditioning; this can be a scary and painful place to visit, but in the end so worthwhile. Without getting too personal, I can say that my biggest blocks are fear of hurting other people, fear of others being envious of me, fear of not being seen or heard for who I am, fear that I’m not good enough, that I need to prove myself, fear that pursuing artistic pursuits is childish (which, ironically, it is, but what’s wrong with that?!?). In short, FEAR keeps me blocked. I spent a lot of time this week looking closely at where and when and why these fears originally took root. According to TAW, we need to change these fears/negative thoughts/enemies/critics/censors into affirmations; she provides a list of 20, but of course you can come up with your own. The affirmations that most resonated with me were:

• As I create and listen, I will be led.
• My creativity heals myself and others (a nice antidote to my fear of hurting others).
• I am allowed to nurture my artist.
• My creativity leads me to forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
• I am willing to learn to let myself create.
• I am willing to experience my creative energy.
• I am wiling to use my creative talents.

Cameron involves God in many of her affirmations. As you can see from my list, I tend to shy away from those ones. I guess I need to explore my feelings about this at some point. I do believe that creativity is a spiritual endeavor, but I’m uneasy with the notion of God. I did come up with an affirmation or two of my own. My favorite one is “Shine on you crazy diamond.” Sounds weird, and I know it was already said by Pink Floyd, but it captures the sense I have of having buried my own creative “diamond,” or really myself, deep in the dirt, hiding it. I have an image in my mind of gradually exposing that diamond, no matter how “crazy” it is. If people don’t like it, they don’t have to look.

The Artist’s Date I found a bit more challenging. The idea is to spend a couple of hours alone with yourself doing something that you wouldn’t normally do. First of all I really resisted doing this; it felt like a chore and I wanted to just call other things that I ended up doing during the week the artist’s date, after the fact (for instance, one day I had 10 minutes to kill so I went to Chapters for a tea; afterwards I thought, “Hey, that could be an artist’s date.”). I finally ended up doing one of the things that I had put on my list of possibilities (a trip to a nearby town on the water, where there’s a department/gift store dating from 1900 that’s supposed to be quaint and interesting, and a boardwalk along the water with an organic food market), and I had a really bad time. If it were a real date I wouldn’t call that person again, because I ended up feeling anxious, confused, alienated, and lonely. I have a few ideas about why, but I’ll save those for another time. Ironically, after coming home from my date, I ended up doing two other things that were really gratifying: I wrote a song that I actually kind of like (I haven’t done that in almost as long as I can remember), and I made a playlist for a good friend of mine that I’m going to burn onto a CD and give to her as a birthday gift. I guess the Artist’s Date forces us to confront ourselves, and learn about who we are, how we like to spend time, how we sometimes feel compelled to do things that maybe aren’t the best for us. Next week I think I’ll go to a used book store for an hour, or spend some time making up playlists for friends, which is creative in its own way but not stressful.

So that’s it for me. I’d love to hear from everyone else: did anyone else have any similar experiences? Different? I feel rather vulnerable exposing myself here, but I assume that might be the case for others too. Finally, a word to my readers who might not be doing TAW: I would highly recommend this process regardless of if you feel yourself to be a blocked artist. It’s really about discovering you and your voice.