The Artist's Way

A few months ago, a friend of Bobbi's loaned her a copy of "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. I think I may have seen it before, but this time something about it struck me and I started writing my "Daily Pages." Daily Pages are a ritual that Cameron recommends: each day write, in longhand, three pages of whatever comes into your head. Don't read it. Just write it. So starting sometime in February, I started doing it. I've missed a day or two, no more, and some days I've written more than three, to catch up.

Cameron's got a whole program, not just the morning pages, but I did not have time to start before we left, so I just kept writing my pages.

When we got home I pulled out the book and started her Eight Week Recovery Program. I'm on Week One which is called "Recovering a Sense of Safety." The idea is to "protect the artist child within" using affirmative weapons." Part of this is just writing down positive thoughts about yourself, letting shit come out that denies the positive, and then being positive in spite of the crap.

So that's what I have been doing for the last few days. It's been interesting. The first day, just as soon as I wrote something positive, The Critic came roaring out to deny my affirmation. I talked back and fought it to a draw. The next day when I said something positie, there was something far weaker trying to contradict me. It was quite easily overcome.

We'll see how it goes.

People who succeed...

In a Rolling Stone article about Kris Kristofferson (written by Ethan Hawke) I found this quote attributed to Eugene O'Neil that I thought was worth passing on:

"The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers."

Looking it up on the Internet to verify it, I found this for context:

"I love life. But I don't love life because it is pretty. Prettiness is only clothes-deep. I am a truer lover than that. I love it naked. There is beauty to me even in its ugliness. In fact, I deny the ugliness entirely, for its vices are often nobler than its virtues, and nearly always closer to a revelation ....To me, the tragic alone has that significant beauty which is truth. It is the meaning of life -- and the hope. The noblest is eternally the most tragic. The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers. Their stopping at success is the proof of their compromising insignificance. How petty their dreams must have been!"-- Eugene O'Neill, from the biography by Barbara and Arthur Gelb 

I'm already hard at work on my next failures.

Brenda Euland and William Blake

I'm rereading Brenda Euland's wonderful book "If you want to write." Her book is not just about writing, but about all acts of creation.

Chapter 1 is titled: "Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to stay." She goes on to proove it and to give examples of people who reached their potential as creators. I'm reading her recounting of William Blake, and that sent me off on a research project to find out more (Damn that Internet! It makes it too easy).

Quotes from Euland about Blake: [Blake's] free and abundant use of his creative power made him one of the happiest men who ever lived. He wrote copious and endless poetry (without the slightest concern that it would ever be published)

Blake said that most of us mix up God and Satan. We see God as "mere prudence."

The only way we can grow and know if something is good or bad is to do it. "Sooner strangle an infant in a cradle than nurse unacted desires."

The Reason that "shrivels the ardor and freedom and the passionate enthusiasm that wells up in us" is Satan. It limits our creativity and denies God, for "nothing is pleasing to God except the creation of beautiful and exalted things."

"Writing, the creative effort, the use of imagination, should come first: at least some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you will use it."

"I want to ensure you with all earnestness that no writing is a waste of time--no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. I know that."

Euland helps inspire me to silence the Critic(s) of my writing--all of them internal. Why write WPFW? Who will read it? That's just become a non-question. I write it because "no writing is a waste of time." I will grow from the writing. Similarly, I draw inspiration from my other sources of advice.