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Recovering a Sense of Compassion: The Artist’s Way Month Nine Recap (Chapter Nine)

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 ninth post of the series, all about recovering a sense of strength; 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 all about thrift hauls, chronic pain, and exploring abandoned buildings.

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Recovering a sense of compassion: fear

In chapter nine of The Artist’s Way, Cameron talks about how, when we’re recovering a sense of compassion, we have to look at our relationship with fear: specifically that what we may have been calling laziness or inability to start is actually fear of failure.

She also talks about how fear affects our ability to create. Often, we look at creation as this monumental task (ex. Writing an entire novel), and in doing so, stop ourselves from starting in the first place.

In order to move past this fear, we need to break creativity down into parts. Instead of looking at it as writing an entire novel, we need to break it down into smaller, easily manageable steps: outlining the chapters, writing 100 words, writing 500 words. Finishing a chapter, and then two, and then ten.

Recovering a sense of compassion: enthusiasm

When recovering a sense of compassion and becoming a creative person, we need to tap into enthusiasm. According to Cameron, discipline has little to do with succeeding as a creative: it’s all about being enthusiastic about the work you’re doing.

Cameron also talks of enthusiasm not as an emotional state, but as a spiritual commitment: to be excited about our work is to be propelled forward. It also means that our creative practice is grounded in play, rather than work, helping us want to sit down to it, even after a long day.

Strangely, I experienced this exact thing throughout May. While editing my novel, I found I couldn’t get enough of it—I was always thinking about the story, how it was changing and what I wanted to add to make it even better. But when I finished it, and it came time to do the technical aspects—writing a query letter and synopsis, researching agents—it felt more like duty than enthusiasm. But I’m reminding myself it’s part of the process!

Recovering a sense of compassion: creative u-turns

The part in this chapter I resonated with the most was the section on creative u-turns, and how they affect us when we’re recovering a sense of compassion. 

Basically, a creative u-turn is us getting in our own way: we’ve achieved success, or are about to, and then do something that will hinder our progress in a big way. For example, I’ve written a number of novels before the one I’m writing now. With one of them, I sent it out to a few agents, and then pushed it to the back of a drawer. I took a big step in the wrong direction—I never gave myself the chance to succeed.

But Cameron reminds us that a successful creative career will always be built on failure. You just need to learn to accept them and keep trying—it’s the only way to move forward if you want a sustainable creative practice.

Morning pages

Morning pages written this month: 26/31

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: 26/31. I find myself wanting to write less and less as this project goes on, though I think this has to do with the fact that I want to spend my time creating and doing, rather than brain dumping. I know it’s an important part of the process, but I’ve felt so restless this month!

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 May, I took myself on five artist dates:

• Writing in a cafe alone x2 
• Knitting in a cafe with a friend x2 
• Drawing in the park alone x1

We had some lovely spring weather for a bit there, but recent days have been cold and rainy—almost as though autumn is trying to come back!

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:

“Priorities: List for yourself your creative goals for the year. List for yourself your creative goals for the month. List for yourself your creative goals for the week.”

“Creative U-Turns: All of us have taken creative U-turns. Name one of yours. Name three more. Name the one that just kills you. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for all failures of nerve, timing, and initiative. Devise a personalized list of affirmations to help you do better in the future.”

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

Some important creative things of note for this month:

• I finished my novel, wrote a synopsis and a query letter, and came up with a list of agents to send the novel to.
• I started outlining the rest of the books in the series (there are seven in total).
• I finished knitting a bandana I’d left on the back burner for some time.
• I also started knitting another fuzzy toque, this one moss green.
• I kept making youtube videos and writing blog posts and newsletters.
• I did some deep soul searching and figured out just what I want creativity to look like in my life. The realizations I came to feel so good, and so in line with who I am.

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

xoxo

Catherine

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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 Strength: The Artist’s Way Month Eight Recap (Chapter Eight)

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