Wow, now I really have to do this. Shit! The accountability, it’s working! Did anything from the intro chapter stick in your maw over the past week? I tried to start the morning pages: I successfully completed all 3 pages 4 mornings and eeked out 1 page the other two days. There were maybe a few ~evening pages~ in there, too. My goal this week is to write all “morning” pages in the “morning.” I am not a “morning” person, so this will be a challenge. But, I do want to create space in my mornings and not launch headlong into feeding the cats/getting ready/working, so this is my chance.
Are you following along and doing this with me? PLEASE let me know if you are. Please. Right now it feels like just me and the cats.
Ok, week 1, here we go!
Recovering a Sense of Safety
Support is a necessary part of being creative, unfortunately, this can be hard to come by.
A young artist may take anything less than affirmative enthusiasm from a parent or teacher as evidence that they shouldn’t pursue creativity.
It’s easy to be dissuaded from pursuing art by someone who thinks they’re helping you be more realistic by encouraging a more traditional career path.
Fledgling artists are often encouraged to be art teachers, to volunteer with crafts, to apply their skill to “practical” jobs that present the illusion of security.
Shadow artists often gravitate toward active artists, but hold limiting beliefs about their own potential to do similar work.
There is no knowing you are an artist, much less a successful one. There is just desire to create.
“In order to move from the realm of shadows into the light of creativity, shadow artists must learn to take themselves seriously.”
Your artist is a child. Find and protect that child.
Judging your early artistic efforts is artistic abuse.
Don’t measure your beginning work against that of the greats.
In recovering from our creative blocks, it is necessary to go gently and slowly.
To be an artist, you have to first be willing to be a bad artist.
The enemy here (as it is in every facet of life) is limiting beliefs.
When we feel blocked, it is because we feel safer that way.
Much fear of our own creativity is fear of the unknown.
We ask ourselves, “If I am fully creative, what will it mean? What will happen to me and to others?” Rather than find out, we stay safely and subconsciously blocked.
A few commonly held limiting beliefs around creativity:
Everyone will hate me
I will hurt my friends and family
I will go crazy
I am delusional
I don’t have good ideas
I will have to be alone
I will feel too angry
I will never have any real money
I will only ever have one good piece of work in me
None of these need to be true.
Once we can sweep away the cultural programming intended to keep us small and safe, we can see these beliefs for what they are: not facts.
Core negative beliefs keep you scared.
Artists can be sober, sane, solvent, responsible, loved, faithful, happy
Being an artists seems too good to be true, so we create these heavy price tags: “I can either be romantically happy OR be an artist, “I can either be financially solvent OR be an artist.”
It’s often audacity, not talent, that moves an artist to center stage. This can brew resentment in those of us on the sidelines with our fearful inner monologues.
Affirmations will help you change this inner script and help achieve a inner landscape of safety and hope.
Start with one. “I, ________, am a brilliant and prolific ________.” Write it 10 times.
Write down all the nasty contrary, objecting thoughts that come to mind when you give attention to this statement. These responses hold the keys to your freedom. What do you believe? Where do these beliefs come from?
Some recommended creative affirmations—remember, you can replace “God” with “source,” “goddess,” “good orderly direction", whatever works for you:
I am a channel for God’s creativity, and my work comes to good.
My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them.
As I create and listen, I will be led.
Creativity is the creator’s will for me.
My creativity heals myself and others.
I am allowed to nurture my artist.
Though the use of a few simple tools, my creativity will flourish.
Through use of my creativity, I serve God.
My creativity always leads me to truth and love.
My creativity leads me to forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
There is a divine plan of goodness for me.
I am willing to create.
I am willing to experience my creative energy.
This week’s tasks. We don’t have to do them all—see what attracts or repels you and do those. Ignore the ones you feel neutral about.
Get up half an hour earlier than usual and write three long-hand, stream-of-conscious pages.
Take yourself on an artist date, something you can do ALONE that will please your inner artist-child.
Time travel
List three old enemies of your creative self-worth. Who told you you can’t create?
Write one horror story, a time you were patronized, embarrassed, or chided for being creative.
List three old champions of your creative self-worth. What did they say to encourage you? Write a thank-you note to one of those creative champions.
If you had 5 other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? Have fun with these. Would you be a monk? A farmer? An author? Is there something you can do this week to emulate that life? I.e., if you want to be a cowperson, can you take a trail ride?
Write out your affirmations and your negative responses to them. Turn each negative into a positive statement.
Take your artist for a brisk 20-minute walk.
I wasn’t planning on sharing more than chapter summaries, but I had a pretty emotional response to re-reading Week 1 tonight.
When she talked about how fiction writers often find themselves in advertising/marketing….gah…I felt seen. How rude to call me out like that! Since my mom recommended I start my first blog about studying abroad in China in 2012, I’ve been a writer. That blog led to me getting hired by a now defunct (and truly problematic) Greek Life website in college, my first paying freelance gig. I moved to DC and starting writing city guides and satire as a freelancer for DCist while I worked as an admin and marketing coordinator. When I took a marketing job at the local paper, I wrote for the arts desk as much as they’d let me, leaving my desk to interview local artists for hours at a time, returning giddily to transcribe and do my actual job late into the night. When I took my current job, where I get to work with copywriters and journalists, this newsletter became my outlet.
I’ve spent intentional, free time doing purely creative writing, not school assignments, most of which was for pay and public consumption (fickle friends), for TEN YEARS. Why am I afraid to make writing my career? Why do I work on the business side of a newspaper, yards from writers? I write email subject lines for Pulitzer Prize winning journalism. Ha. What a sentence!
I am crying now, so I think the book is working.
Have you had any big insights from the book thus far?
Onward.
Until next week,
Elizabeth