Week 00: Introduction, Morning Pages, and Artist's Dates

[rejectionchallenge]

Hey there! Welcome to The Artist's Way, a free and voluntary creative workshop based on Julia Cameron's book of the same name. The book arrived on my doorstep on Friday, and running a little behind, but I'd like to start the 12-week workshop today with a couple of introductions and our first weekly post.

The purpose of this workshop is to unblock the creative efforts of anyone who wants more creativity in their lives, or to feel freer and less conflicted about their existing creative pursuits. It's intended to be suitable for everyone who wants it, including people who are working artists, people with creative hobbies, and people who have avoided creativity since they were children. Every week will have a theme and daily tasks exploring that theme

In addition, Cameron has a couple of core practices for this workshop, which she encourages you to treat as non-negotiable: daily morning pages, and weekly artist's dates.

The following introduction to morning pages, artist's dates, and the community as a whole is quoted verbatim from alexconall's original, posted on Sep. 12th, 2013.

The morning pages are three longhand pages' worth, or about seven hundred fifty words (750words.com is also inspired by Julia Cameron, but I hear they're pay-only now so I can't exactly wholeheartedly recommend them), of writing first thing in the morning about anything that comes to mind. Literally anything, up to and including "I have nothing to say" repeated a hundred fifty times or "fuck this noise" two hundred fifty times. No one is allowed to read these pages but you, and at first you're not supposed to reread them either. The idea is that everyone has a lot of thoughts that interfere with creativity, negative or self-pitying or childish or repetitive thoughts, and getting those thoughts on paper gets them out of your head to allow for clarity of creative thought. Cameron insists that morning pages are nonnegotiable, and that as there's no wrong way to do them and no wrong mood to be in while doing them, they will help you learn to shut down the inner editor and simply create.

The artist's date is an hour or two every week set aside for you and you alone. Spend quality time with yourself, Cameron says; she relates the inner artist to a child of divorce, spending most of the week with the custodial parent who has no time for the artist child, and insists you give that artist time and attention. Self-care is important, and time just for you is part of self-care. What you do on your artist's dates is up to you—perhaps a hike in a state park, or a visit to a museum, or a trip to an unfamiliar part of town. Maybe time to bake if you're a writer, or cross-stitch if you're a baker, or sketch if you're a fiber artist. Perhaps a guided meditation. Maybe consuming art. Whatever it is, it needs to be something enjoyable, not something good for you but not fun.

Quoting alexconall again:

The morning pages and artist's date are on you to schedule. This comm will provide weekly posts, drawn in large part from The Artist's Way, on the theme of the week, and daily posts with tasks stolen outright from Cameron's pages. Cameron suggests doing the tasks that most and least appeal to you, on the principle that if it appeals to you it's worth doing and if you resist it then there's a reason and you should find out what that reason is. The weekly posts will also serve as check-ins for the previous week's morning pages and artist's date, and as spaces to discuss your progress.

Finally, Cameron insists that students of her The Artist's Way sign a contract with themselves as a commitment. Her text is below: modify it if you like, then sign and date it. Come back to it, she says, when you need encouragement.

I, ________, understand that I am undertaking an intensive, guided encounter with my own creativity. I commit myself to the twelve-week duration of the course. I, ________, commit to weekly reading, daily morning pages, a weekly artist's date, and fulfilment of each week's tasks.

I, ________, further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions for me to deal with. I, ________, commit myself to excellent self-care—adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and [recreation] —for the duration of the course.

________ (signature)
________ (date)

That about sums it up. Posts will be based on both The Artist's Way and alexconall's excellent summaries from last year. You're invited to comment on each day's task in as much or as little detail as you like. However, you're not required to comment or even to say whether you've done the task.

In addition to the posting schedule described above, I'll probably be adding an additional weekly item, discussed briefly in the next post.

Comments

[ljwrites]

Excellent summary. I did my first set of artist's pages today and am still deciding what to do for my artist's date. Maybe a bike ride over the weekend, or maybe a movie. It's likelier to be a movie since I have a company outing on Saturday. I also signed the contract, which is a clever bit of psychology since the very act of signing or affirming something tends to have a binding effect on the mind.