The Artist's Way: My 12 Week Experience

In October Jon and I decided to do the famous “creative recovery” course, The Artist's Way, together. Here are my notes on the 12-week experience.

Week 1: Shadow Artists

From the get-go I felt seen as I’d never been seen before. What stuck with me most this week was the Shadow Artist: one who’s drawn to art but doesn’t feel worthy, so she does supporting role-type stuff like marketing or production.

Many of my creative issues stem from the fact that I worked in the “perverting art for commercial gain” field of writing. Sponsored content and SEO content. I could never feel like a "real" writer, I think, if I did not try to write some stuff that was of no value to any brand; something just for me.

Week 2: Skepticism

Whenever I try to write something “fit for publishing”, it falls flat and I run out of words. It's weird because my unpublished personal ramblings are full of excitement and joy, but once I try to adapt them for publishing, they go flaccid.

The idea of myself as an artist is, at the moment, absurd. This is despite 2 recent moments of professional success: having my work praised by a client and getting my highest-paying writing gig ever. Actually, these incidents depress me. I'm afraid that I will only ever be good as a paid writer, while my own work is crap.

Week 3: Childhood

It had been so long since I indulged in childhood memories, but once I started, I couldn't stop. The sensory memories flooded back (my grandma scratching my mosquito bites; jumping around to Beastie Boys with my brother) and I found myself becoming... less adult. That is, much more willing to follow instincts and whims rather than rational thought.

For this week’s Artist Date I went window shopping at Popular bookstore. Without even buying any stationery, I was so energised that I started drawing in my journal the next day. I hadn’t drawn for at least 5 years.

Week 4: Reading Deprivation

No books, articles, stories, etc. for 7 days. As anticipated, I was irritable, anxious, needy. I wanted to talk, I wanted words!

A revelation: books are my crutch. The more self-improvement I read, the worse I feel... I try out new “systems” and “hacks” in the hope that one day I will be that person who’s totally clear about her values and mission in life and has the daily routine to prove it.

One of the exercises is to write letters from your 8-year-old, then your 80-year-old self, to you right now. Here’s what both my selves said:

Week 5: Being Mean

In the few weeks since we started doing The Artist’s Way, I’ve come to accept a jarring truth: my professional success has poisoned my true self. In monetising my interest in writing, I have harmed the artist within.

I wonder if that has anything to do with the ways I am mean to myself.

Week 6: Counting Money

This week we had to write down every single expense. Yikes!

"We fritter away cash on things we don't cherish and deny ourselves those things that do," writes Julia Cameron. In my case, the money spent on forgettable fast food could have been spent more intentionally on groceries I’m excited to cook.

On the other hand, I gained some new flow in my life. I started allowing myself to dream about income streams that do not exhaust my creative energy. And I got not one, but two: a rabbit boarding business & a part-time bookstore job.

Week 7: Skills

Came close to burnout due to life happening. Yet despite the packed schedule and emotionally running on fumes, I did my morning pages and was writing better than ever. It seems my creative life has gone on despite the time crunch.

If the first half of the course was about laying psychological groundwork and undoing the habits of the past, we now move forward by cultivating new artist skills: listening, ignoring perfection, doing things badly, and… being jealous!?

Turns out that jealousy might be a potent cocktail of desire + fear. You’re only jealous of someone when they have what you desire for yourself. Instead of stewing in envy, learn to analyse what it is you want and what actions you can take take. Being able to turn jealousy into action is a superpower.

Week 8: Fill the Form

Small, concrete, daily actions are what we need to overcome most creative stumbling blocks, from a low-grade addiction to anxious thoughts to an artistic blow in the form of criticism or rejection. On anxiety addiction:

For me it manifests as the sudden need to do housework and/or fantasising about the “perfect life”, the one where I can live off beans/air so that I can write without worrying about money. A waste of energy!

Week 9: Creative U-Turns

How timely. This chapter came just as I had given up on the idea of writing a book. This was after many brutally honest conversations about about what I wanted out of it (a shortcut to prestige; a quick fix for my lack of artistic achievement).

Julia Cameron: We call ourselves "lazy" when we're unable to create. 

Me: Fuck yeah. I have been especially "lazy" lately. I had a good few days of writing, and then all of a sudden, my brain just won't start anymore.

Julia Cameron: But maybe it's really fear that prevents us from starting, you know?

Me: It doesn't feel like fear. Undisciplined, is how I feel.

Julia Cameron: Some people think being an artist requires serious discipline. Military precision. Waking up at the crack of dawn. Saluting the desk.

Me: That's me for about 5 minutes, and then I burn out.

Julia Cameron: But over the long term, it's not duty but enthusiasm that keeps us going. It's joy. It's a sense of play. It's a 6am playdate with yourself to goof around while no one else is up.

Week 10: Drugs

In which I discovered how much of my time and attention is taken up by household chores.

This is not the genial pottering-about-the-house it sounds like. No, my housework is reactive, anxiety-fuelled, piecemeal and slipshod. The instant I sit down to write something important, I feel the dishes in the sink screaming at me, urging me to get up, not let things slide.

And now I've realised that the "scream" from the kitchen sink is entirely from within.

Week 11: Self-acceptance

At some point, an artist may enjoy "success". Not necessarily a good thing. With success comes, often, the chase for further success and/or the compulsion to creating more work using the same hit formula. Success = illusory safety = BAD!

We mustn't end up playing too safe. We must guard our freedom to do weird shit, sometimes by turning down lucrative deals and the luxuries they bring.

To be an artist is (often) to defy accepted standards. You're not normal and that's okay. Sticking to a hit formula and getting paid handsomely for it is for the rest of the world, not for you.

Week 12: The End

Roadblocks come in the form of ‘I don’t know’s. But the truth is we do know. We're just afraid to trust that life could be anything other than what we've been conditioned to believe (we suffer, and then we die).

The other thing is to not worry about the murk. Creative work requires gestation. During this period of seemingly aimless mulling about, it'll be tempting to try and "push, pull, outline, and control our ideas" at this point. But to do so is to risk forcing a premature birth.

How doing The Artist’s Way has changed me

I've become a LOT less pragmatic. I used to view everything through a utilitarian/instrumental lens by default, but now I do it a lot less.

I'm now willing to follow inexplicable attractions. I have stopped trying to understand or talk myself out of my more peculiar whims. These days I simply indulge myself.

I have made peace with the fact that I'm never going to be moved by the "elegiac prose" or "insight into the human condition" of most literary fiction. I would rather read about cat shit, pimples, and bad sex. To me the profane is sacred.

I now believe that money will flow in as needed. This is a big one.

I have moved on from my past life as a relatively successful full-time writer. I have begun to explore my own voice and discover what I genuinely like.

I am challenging entrenched self-limiting beliefs.

On a practical level, I have transformed from an unhappy freelance writer doing way too much crypto content for my sanity, to a… pet sitter and retail worker?

Moving forward, I want: more confidence, more new and scary things, more playfulness and fun, more laughing at myself, more curiosity and openness, and fewer expectations.