Every so often I'd hear about The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I'd never heard anyone gush about it, but a lot of people seemed to have heard of it and knew what I was talking about. It's a journey to discover/recover your creativity with a couple of tools: Morning Pages and the Artist Date.
I'd heard about Morning Pages years ago, I'm not sure where from, but there seemed to be a fashion, people were doing things first thing in the morning, either writing their Morning Pages, or spending half an hour journalling or perhaps drawing, only half an hour, mind, that seemed to be part of the code. Maybe it was on the NLab course I went on long ago, say 2005 or 2006, when Web 2.0 was new.
I had tried them myself, Morning Pages, by hand and online at 750words.com, but I'd never had much success. I didn't really get it. 750words will helpfully analyse your words for you and tell you your themes and preoccupations and whether you were focused on the past or the future or now. Mostly, I found it a miserable experience.
Then I read a post here about The Artist's Way, a friend who had found it useful, and then went on to write a book review for Hive Book Club. Recently, maybe two or three weeks ago, she was writing about it again and how her life was developing. I thought it sounded quite good, I thought I might buy a copy.
I hesitated for a bit because, well, I'm very busy just now with work and finishing the house, and packing up and clearing out and getting ready to go to the caravan, and also doing my knitting and art stuff around the edges.
I'm going through a transition, it's a long transition, it's taken several years already maybe it will never actually end, I'll just keep moving to the next thing. Anyway, I thought, I'm too busy to be taking on another commitment. It will have to wait.
And then it occurred to me that it might help me with some of the decisions and things that need doing and maybe buying the book and having a go would help clear my mind and make it easier and more pleasant. I bought the audio version from
xigxag and also cribbed the bits I wanted from Amazon, you know - where it says,
Read a Sample. And checking, AI will give you a good summary in response to
how to do Morning Pages.
The book was very helpful for explaining what Julia's ideas and thinking about Morning Pages are, the story of their evolution for her, and the different ways in which she uses them. It was good to have the overview along with her assurances of "and you will see a difference." I'd come across this idea before - do this small thing and you will see a big difference. I thought I'd give it a go.
I've written them for fifteen days now, a newbie still. It took me a few days to remember that I'd decided to do them, I think four days in, they didn't get written until about 2.45pm. Better late than not at all, though. I solved that problem by setting an alarm on my phone.
The other tool is the Artist Date, a date you make with yourself to do something on your own, to absorb yourself in the experience, whether it is to be inspired, have fun, relax, whatever appeals to you. An hour or two each week, which is sacrosanct. It could be a walk, a visit to a gallery or performance, something else.
There's a lot of other stuff, some of it typical of American books - full of fillers about this person's experience and that famous person's quote about creativity. One case study was about Wade, who was this kind of [unimaginative] person, who started writing Morning Pages and found himself doing this kind of [creative] activity.
I wish Wade all the best, but my first thought was Wade Wilson and Deadpool and the bar and the taxi driver and the blind woman and the silly trailers with Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman (quite amusing) and the juvenile humour about sex. I guess I was being juvenile, too, but really, 200 pages of case studies?
Anyway, let's talk about the benefits.
I've enjoyed doing my Morning Pages, I would even say that I look forward to them, although, like everything, it took me a while to get into them. Some days seem to be full of distractions, but gradually I've got into the groove. It's only fifteen days so I don't want to make great claims but I have noticed differences in that time.
In the Morning Pages themselves, the nature of what I'm writing has changed. At first it was more fraught, all these things to get written. I don't bother too much about what I write, although sometimes during the day something happens and I think I'll write about that in my Morning Pages. Or other times, things occur to me and I think it would be useful to explore what comes out of my pen about that. Occasionally I've picked out something I've wanted to get done that day.
Over the days, that's started to change. I just see what I write about.
I use copier paper because I've got loads and I write on one side, three sheets. I like my gel pens to write with, they glide over the paper and have a soft rubber waist that's nice and giving to hold. I keep the pen top on, that seems to make it easier to control the pen.
I just write, number the pages (why? they are not intended to be read), fold together in three and stick them in a bigger envelope I had handy, in my sewing basket. I write the date on the outside and soon I started to write a little summary or some thought that occurred to me as I was folding and labelling. It must be important because I usually put a box round it.
The days are changing, too, I've noticed. One of the major reasons for wanting to start Morning Pages was the panic attacks I was getting sometimes in the morning. They seem to have gone, for now anyway, and the day starts more peacefully. I'm waking up earlier, and the days seem to have filled out, become lighter and airier. Of course, it is lighter and warmer, as well, but this is about a mood.
As I've offloaded those little jobs I was writing in my Morning Pages, life has begun to expand. I'm becoming less obsessed with work, less feeling there is more to do (there is more to do, but I'm not fretting about it, I don't feel weighed down but it). I've done the Artist Date each week, too, made myself go to the Poetry performance (so easy not to, so easy to make an excuse), take part in a workshop, go out for lunch in the Park.
I've started thinking about these accumulating Morning Pages. Soon the handy storage envelope will be full. The Morning Pages are not intended to be read, they're more a repository for things you don't need any more. A sort of decluttering of the mind. I'm wondering why you keep them at all.
I came across a youtube video of someone who burned his - that's an after shot above. That's probably the best thing about them - the beautiful pattern left after burning. He put them on the compost. He was talking about a ritual and linking it to other techniques that I've also been subjected to on training courses. I wondered, though, couldn't I just tear them up, cut out the middle polluting the planet bit, and put them straight in the compost. Seems fitting, really.
Even better at the bottom of a trench for potatoes or courgettes.
