Week 02: Recovering A Sense of Identity

[rejectionchallenge]

If you've spent a whole week recovering your creative self, it's normal to find yourself attacked by stronger doubt and self-doubt. Like ideas and bacteria, our creative blocks adapt. Some common attacks include worries about doing morning pages the wrong way, anxiety about being selfish or self-indulgent, or the need to start a big new project right away. Cameron encourages us to keep doing affirmations, and to make new affirmations out of any new attacks. It's also important not to show your morning pages to anyone, even yourself.

This week, we'll work on separating ourselves from the attackers.



Not all of them come from within. Well-meaning friends may express disapproval or otherwise undermine the unblocking process (Cameron suggests that they feel threatened by our recovery because it challenges their own creative blocks). It's important not to take their doubts too much to heart. Decide for yourself whether what you're doing is silly, a waste of time, etc.. Reserve the right to waste your own time and to be silly and vulnerable if it works for you.

Other people in your life may be generally destructive. If you have friends who constantly sabotage you in large or small ways, who demand attention and support without giving any in return, who belittle your difficulties or your hopes, please take this course as an opportunity to carve out some space apart from them and their shit-stirring ways (That goes double if you find yourself realizing that you are that friend).

A common fear is that creativity is selfish. You may find yourself volunteering to do things for others, or accepting requests for work or favors, as a way of avoiding creative projects. In my case, volunteering to take over this community gave me an excellent opportunity to neglect my own Rejection Challenge. If you're quick to take on tasks that benefit other people but have trouble finding time for your artist, you might be using your altruism as a form of creativity avoidance.

Skepticism – about the course, about your own abilities and commitment, about individual tasks or concepts – is another common attacker. You do not have to become totally credulous to separate yourself from it, and I don't recommend that you try. But skepticism, like robotics, is a valuable tool with the potential to turn against us. What starts out as a realistic self-assessment can easily metastasize into a sixteen-story robot sentinel blasting ideas into oblivion the moment they appear.

If you tend to be wary of new ideas and patterns of thought, or to mistrust opportunities and compliments, try to give yourself an hour every day as a skepticism-free zone. Say, “I am going to turn off my doubt about [. . .] for one hour” (or one day, or ten minutes). Remind yourself that you can always turn it back on after that time. You don't need to reject your doubts out of hand, but do resolve to set them aside long enough to let some of those improbable flowers bloom.



This week, try using physical cues to help give yourself the space you need. Give yourself an hour every day of protected time. Turn off the phone, turn off the computer (or use Zenwriter, TextRoom, or another simplifier), and don't respond to messages during that time. Put on music, change the lighting, or burn incense if those things are effective for you. If you can spare a whole hour at once, then do it. If you can only manage fifteen-minute blocks of time, use those instead.

Please feel free to use these weekly posts as an open thread for thoughts, issues, and observations regarding last week, plans for this one, or anything else you want to talk about that hasn't been addressed.

Don't forget to do your morning pages, and to schedule a date with your artist sometime this week.

Comments

[ljwrites]

Creativity as selfishness is something that gets me, too. Intellectually I think that's a misconception of the relationship between community and crativity, and that we contribute to others through creative works expressive of our individuality. Getting it on an emotional level is another issue. Also it's an excellent cue for the jabbering voice of the Censor to start up about whether my work is any kind of positive contribution ("Well if you think derivative drek is a gift..."). Also there's the fact that the "community" that art might or might not contribute to is a lot larger and more abstract than the immediate communities that have right-this-minute demands on their members' time and attention.

On a related note, I'm listening to "The Righteous Mind" by University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and I find myself applying the findings of moral psychology to Cameron's points. Cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder divided ethics into three main areas of autonomy, community, and divinity. It seems to me that Cameron in this frame is pointing out how the ethics of community can suppress creativity, and her solution is to short-circuit this by using the ethics of divinity (spirituality, God) and autonomy (self-fulfillment, time alone).

To me though, creativity is not altogether complete without the ethics of community. All this talk of "I deserve" "my time" "my dreams" without reference to contribution and connectivity are somewhat alienating and off-putting. I don't think that's because I'm downtrodden or whatever, but because I have a different background and because human beings on a fundamental level aren't complete without other human beings. Even the proudly selfish Objectivists congregated with each other, lol.

I'm fine with the idea of being fulfilled in myself and in my spirituality, and these are fundamental parts of life. However, I'm not complete without being part of society, and I think that social aspect is under-emphasized in Cameron's book. I may have to make up for that in my own exercises by supplementing thoughts and tasks that strengthen the creative ethics of community.

[rejectionchallenge]

These are good points, I think. I grew up with a very individualistic, me-and-the-muse-against-the-world model of creativity and it took me a long time to figure out that that sort of thing doesn't really work for me. That is, if I don't have some community context, I don't understand what I'm doing in the first place and I never get anything done.

I'm worried because a lot of this upcoming week (well, and the whole thing) is going to be about "protect your creative time" and various kinds of separation -- so suggestions for correcting the under-emphasis would be welcome.

While I often feel that I disagree with Cameron in some way, I don't think I can always articulate very well what the problem is (and what I disagree with isn't necessarily going to be what other people disagree with, anyway). So anything you can add along the way would be very much appreciated.

[ljwrites]

Oh, I have no problem with starting by clarifying and protecting individual boundaries. I just like to see individuals, thus strengthened, to expand into connections with others, with artistic communities and even society at large. I'm thinking of exercises with a more communitarian orientation for later weeks, and will share them if you're okay with it.

[rejectionchallenge]

Please do share them if you have some!

[ljwrites]

I'll work on writing some! *puts on thinking cap*

[dreamwriters]

I agree her lack of emphasis on community is sometimes a turn off... And I also sometimes ARGUE about her thing with not showing yourself your morning pages until much later in the course.

Sometimes I take another spiritual-ish writer/artist who has a similar vein but slightly different approach (SARK) and use her methods of blurt-conversion instead (3 Part Harmony [which is convoluted and sugary but I'm supposedly a lyrical writer so it works for me]) and finding artist/fill-the-well time (this'll come up later with Cameron -- next week mostly, I think -- but i'll put it here now anyway) [micromovements])

I think SARK is a good complement to Cameron, though honestly, I tend to recommend SARK first to newly recovering artists (mostly because SARK approaches the same demons playfully -- her approach is therefore less intimidating... also books written in SARK's childish marker glory doodles makes my inner artist gleeful).

[rejectionchallenge]

Sounds interesting -- thanks for the links! I'll check it out and maybe bring some of it back here when I have time. I like the three-part harmony idea a lot, though it might be a lengthier process than some people will want to deal with (by "some people" here I might just mean "me")

I think the de-emphasizing community and emphasizing self-protection might be valuable sometimes as a corrective -- I mean, I think it is for me, some of the time, though over-emphasis on The Lone Artist and The Artist's Self-Sufficient Soul tropes was definitely also a dead end for me. I don't know; I have mixed feelings about it.

I'm going to press on with what I've got for the time being, which is fairly Cameronish, but please do argue and augment wherever you see an opportunity. Hopefully we can improve the workshop as we go along.

[perfectworry]

Someone who has completed the course, do we know if there's a later chapter with a theme of "find your tribe"? Perhaps because of my workplace, my friends, and my relationship history, I actually find this chapter (and the admonition that artist dates must be taken alone) quite useful, or otherwise, I would never go out of the way to make time for my creativity, and just always get my projects tangled up with other people.

I love collaborative creation, but the first time I started The Artist's Way, I found it helpful to rediscover my own creativity, alone, and not always need it to be entwined with another person - because if/when that person leaves, let me tell you, it hurts like hell, and I always felt like that was it, I would never create again, or at least nothing that good.

[rejectionchallenge]

Also a good point! I haven't actually completed the course past Week 9, when it ended here. I'll check, though.

[dreamwriteremmy]

(this is dreamwriters just too lazy to log into the other account right now haha)

In some editions there's an appendix: trail mix that has a chapter called "Forming a Sacred Circle" which is kind-of but not exactly what you're asking for. This blogger quoted the whole chapter in a 3-part post series that can be found here with some added images.
http://high-road-artist.com/?s=The+Sacred+Circle+

I don't think this book has a specific chapter on this particular area. I believe at least looking at the table of contents in my edition that the THIRD book in the program, Finding Water, has this specific task (emphasizing more the circle stuff about "supportive/encouraging" artists partners), but I've never actually gone that far yet in the program. :)

[arguablylost]

Hi! I just wanted to say that I've really been enjoying the workshop so far! :) Well done!

[rejectionchallenge]

Thanks!