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Recovering a Sense of Connection: The Artist’s Way Month Seven Recap (Chapter Seven)

Hi! If you’re new here: I’m doing a year-long series where I work through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and document it here on the blog. This is the seventh post of the series, all about recovering a sense of connection; you can find the explanation for this series here and the previous post here.

Before we begin: I started making Youtube videos again! My most recent one is a little spend the day with me, where we plant seeds, visit the library and talk about books, and do some unexpected DIY projects around the house.

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Recovering a sense of connection: artists as instruments

In this chapter of The Artist’s Way, Cameron talks about how artists aren’t just the authors of their work, but the instruments through which this work is achieved.

She talks about it in the sense that, sometimes, a piece or writing or art comes to us fully (or almost) formed. We think this to be a miracle, when it’s, apparently, the norm.

I love the sentiment, and find it to be mostly true with myself—once I start writing, it often come out without much thought—I know there are others who disagree with this. I expect Cameron would have a whole lot to say to these people (though I don’t know how much of it would resonate if they weren’t open to it).

Recovering a sense of connection: accepting your drive to create

Cameron also talks of how, as humans, we are naturally creative. We want to paint, and draw, and write, and dance, but sometimes—a lot of the time—we forget how to do this.

Practicing being creative is how we go about recovering a sense of connection. When we engage in little bits of creativity, we’re strengthening that connection between ourselves and our artistic practice.

Because creativity is essentially like any other habit: you have to actually do it for the habit to form. And once it does, it comes easier and easier, until you don’t have to put much thought into it at all.

Recovering a sense of connection: not fearing mistakes

Another way Cameron says we can practice recovering our sense of connection is to understand that there are no mistakes in art. The perfectionist in us tells us there are—that there are a lot of them, in fact—but this isn’t the case.

Everything we do when we’re making art is a part of it, and whatever comes out comes out. It doesn’t matter if what you’re making doesn’t look like what you expected it to: it’s still art.

Our inner perfectionists will never be satisfied, anyway—they’ll never get what they want. It’s better to accept that there are no mistakes: whatever you create is how it was meant to be created.

Morning pages

Morning pages written this month: 27/31

For those of you unfamiliar with The Artist’s Way or morning pages: morning pages are a daily writing exercise where you dump everything in your brain onto the page. You’re supposed to just write—no stopping or reading back on what you read—for three whole pages. If you don’t know what to write, you write “I don’t know what to write” until you do.

Personally, I’ve never been all that good at following rules or instructions (no surprise to anyone who knows me in real life!). However, I do take these as guidelines. So, for the first few days, I was writing my morning pages by the book: three pages, no stopping or looking back. 

But, aside from my morning pages, I have a journal where I write every day: thoughts, ideas, what I’m planning for the day. Basically, morning pages, but smaller. And because I didn’t want to give up this journaling practice, and I also didn’t want to do three morning pages and write in my journal, I ended up combining them, which has worked so well for me.

This month, I did most of my morning pages: 27/31 I’m finding these are coming easier, but I never truly stick to a schedule. At this point they’re less morning pages and just.. pages. But the effect is the same, I think.

Artist dates

Another pillar of The Artist’s Way is artist dates, where you (the artist) take yourself on at least one date a week. This could be anything from writing in a coffee shop to visiting an art gallery to making art in the park. The goal of this is to “nurture your inner artist,” as Cameron states in the introduction of the book. 

You can read about how I’ve bent the rules to this in this post.

During March, I took myself on six artist dates:

• Walking around a garden center x2 (one solo, one with my partner)
• Writing at a coffee shop x2 (solo)
• Knitting at a cafe x1 (with a friend)
• Reading at the library x1 (solo)

Now that the sun is coming out, I feel much more motivated to leave my house and do fun things. It’s just so easy to hibernate in winter!

Tasks

In every chapter of The Artist’s Way, Cameron outlines a list of tasks for the reader to engage in. Each chapter’s list is extensive, and so I choose just a few to do. This month, I chose:

“Give yourself time out to listen to one side of an album, just for joy. You may want to doodle as you listen, allowing yourself to draw the shapes, emotions, thoughts you hear in the music. Notice how just twenty minutes can refresh you. Learn to take these mini artist dates to break stress and allow insight.”

“Create one wonderful smell in your house—with soup, incense, fir branches, candles—whatever.”

“Wear your favorite item of clothing for no special occasion.”

—Above quotes are taken from The Artist’s Way, Chapter Seven

Some important creative things of note for this month:

• I finally finished the first draft of my novel, after putting it off for far too long, and am very much looking forward to editing it soon.
• In an unexpected turn of events, I’ve started taking on writing and editing clients, which is quite exciting.
• I knit a pair of hand warmers (a bit too late for winter) and am working on a moss stitch bandana, as well as a tank top.
• I wrote a poem for the first time in months.
• I’ve been consistently writing newsletters each week on substack, which are quite different from the blog posts I write, and I love them for that.
• I’ve also been keeping up with making youtube videos, something I’m enjoying quite a bit as well (and have some very exciting plans for in the near future).

How did you make time to be creative this month? And what did you create?

xoxo

Catherine

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Thank you for reading! There’s no new printable this week, but you can see all the printables I’ve made previously in my shop, Toad in the Attic.

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Some more posts you may like

Digging down into the dirt to find who I used to be: A year of creativity

Blooming, breathing: How no longer setting goals for myself has made life better

Recovering a Sense of Abundance: The Artist’s Way Month Six Recap (Chapter Six)

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