The Artist’s Way Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

Is there anyone who isn’t battling with frustration, anxiety, anger, or rage? It would be odd not to feel some or all of these right now. Perhaps if we can work through them we can become better people and make a contribution to the better world that so many people need and deserve. In the week that Black Lives Matter dominates the news agenda, what am I doing fiddling about with this self-help programme? What value can I, a white middle-aged writer, add to the current debate? My first reaction to the protests is fear for the brave people facing up to guns and teargas. I watch the statue of Edward Colston being torn down in Bristol and again my initial emotion is fear: I can’t see how this will end well. Later on the same day I check myself and remember the visit I made to the International Slavery Museum in my home town of Liverpool in February: the Colston statue, and a whole host of others, should have come down years ago; street names should be changed; reparations should be paid; and public apologies are long overdue. There has to be a reckoning and a levelling. Coincidentally, lots of people have been writing (in regard to the coronavirus) about how we have an opportunity to change society; but what recent events have shown us is that this is not an opportunity, it’s an imperative. Writers have to find a way to play their part in this.

This week I am challenged to identify and counter ‘the perils that can ambush us on our creative path’. My task is to focus on the one or two fixations, habits or actions that are most toxic to my creativity: I disregard food, drugs and alcohol; I’m not a workaholic, although I spend more time than is healthy thinking or worrying about work; and I don’t have the pain of a doomed love affair to obsess on. I settle upon anxiety – anyone in my family will tell you I was born with a furrowed brow – because that is what started all of this off: unremitting and unbearable fear for the future. Julia Cameron asserts that we artists block ourselves because we fear where our creativity might take us when we’d rather stay where we are. In my case, that simply isn’t true: I’m far from happy being this anxious and I would welcome being whisked away to far flung unexplored lands. A sentence in a section dealing with Workaholism suddenly makes sense: ‘In creative recovery, it is far easier to get people to do the extra work of the morning pages than it is to get them to do the assigned play of an artist date.’ I have to get away from this idea that play is frivolous because in the face of crippling stress and fear, it might be the only way forward. If I can’t change the things that are making me anxious I can at least give my head an occasional holiday. This means spending time away from the desk; not on chores (a favourite distraction) but on fun stuff, like reading, running, drawing and, well, I need to think up some more fun stuff because I’ve forgotten how to play. I challenge myself to keep a play diary.

Julia moves on to Drought. How does she do it? Lately I have been worrying (I told you) that I have nothing to say; I want to have something to say, but I’ve seized up. I’m relieved to read that ‘In any creative life there are dry seasons’. Hopefully, by recognising this, by trusting my artist and by persisting with the morning pages – on this Julia is insistent – I will get through this arid patch. I need to keep reading, observing, listening, exploring and playing and also perhaps I need to take a breather. And if I’m giving myself a break, maybe I should stop worrying about all the rejections and competition failures. I interpret a passage about Fame as one and the same thing as the desire for recognition. It’s easy to get worked up about acclaim and credibility, but what do they have to do with the creative process? Doing the work is all that matters. The final lesson this week – the final habit from which I need to protect myself – is Competition: yet another poisonous distraction that will prove toxic for my creative well. I wrote last week about how I feel supportive to my peer group, but that does not always extend to writers I have never met who are enjoying the kind of success I have yet to achieve. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to sublimating my ego.

I can’t be alone in finding lockdown (whichever version you choose to follow) exhausting; I’m far too weary for this week’s exercises, which is a shame because under the heading of Cherishing I am encouraged to list five small victories, three nurturing actions I took for my artist and three actions I could take to comfort my artist. I think I’d have trouble listing victories, except for the odd hand of Rummy, but surely I can find the energy to nurture and comfort my artist. Must do better.

POST-SCRIPT: last week’s resolve to get to work on the second novel resulted in an exploratory scene and after that, nothing. I’m trying hard to feel relaxed about this lack of progress and am telling myself that it’s okay: it’s part of the process and somewhere inside the creative part of me, ideas are coalescing and sentences are taking tentative steps. A side project – a previously mentioned collaboration – is moving forward: I have had an idea for a series of novels and for an interesting and unusual way of writing them. It’s both playful and ambitious and for that reason I have to make it happen.

Read Week 11 here.