Artist's Way Extra: Week 08 Meta

[rejectionchallenge]

There wasn't really enough Spiritual Path material in this chapter to merit a post, so I'm opening up a discussion / check-in thread. Talk about your progress or regress, complain about me or Cameron or me complaining about Cameron, or talk about what's been working / not working for you.

Search your feelings, interrogate the text from the wrong perspective, swap recipes, or just go back to bed and call it an artist's date. Anything goes in this special Artist's Way Extra Meta Post!

Comments

[chordatesrock]

I thought the challenge to do the things you envy when other people do them sounded like a good idea, but there's, unfortunately, a difference between "I wish I could hold up that finished product as my own" and "I love doing this!" and the truth is, there are things we wish we could have done that we don't actually want to do. (Hello, photorealism!)

The letters to yourself seem sort of weird; maybe they work for some people, but I immediately thought "Dear chordatesrock, here are the bets you need to make to become very wealthy. Congratulations on having as much money as you need for all reasonable purposes. Now, if you're still not satisfied, here are some stocks that trend upward in the next few years, and here's when to sell them. Sincerely, chordatesrock"

I gather that the letter from your older self is supposed to make you consider what sounds like a plausible surprise-- something you can sort of imagine being more likely than a random guess, that you could believe if told by your future self, but that would still be surprising.

"Morning pages" are consistently useful for me.

I dislike Cameron's watered-down no-commitment self-centered spirituality. I've gotten into that before.

I still don't understand what an artist's date is.

[perfectworry]

I've thought of the artist's date as something fun you might not otherwise allow yourself to do because it's too frivolous or selfish. I'm very stingy with myself, but my first real artist's date was to take myself to a special exhibition of Shinto holy artifacts; it's something I'm very interested in, but I dithered about the cost of a ticket (more expensive than McDonalds, less expensive than a week's groceries, and easily within my budget) and the "artist's date" gave me the excuse I needed to give myself permission.

Mostly my artist's dates involve very long walks or bike rides through the city, though; because I'm young and single, no children, and my two best friends in the city work Saturdays, I have a whole day a week to myself anyway. I try to use the "artist's date" so I structure my time in a way that makes me feel like I've used it wisely instead of wasting it all on small meaningless tasks that ultimately don't make me feel more productive, or better rested, or enlightened or whatever.

… does that all make sense?

[chordatesrock]

Thank you. That does make sense.

[rejectionchallenge]

I'm curious about how religious people feel about Cameron's presentation of spirituality. She talks a lot about God (aka "good orderly direction" aka "spiritual electricity") and how important it is that you believe in or trust in her/it/xim/them because God is working through you whatever you call it, and also that God wants certain things, like for everyone to be creative -- but it also doesn't always seem like she's treating it like a real entity with a will of its own, but more like an externalization of whatever you-the-reader secretly want the most? Or something?

Cameron clearly thinks the spirituality is an important component of the book / program, but I don't see it -- to me, it's just confusing and non-sequitur-y, but if I believed in a God, I feel like it might be even weirder and more alienating, because Cameron's God is so murky and convenient. I don't know; I might be getting it all wrong.

I like the artist's dates for the same reason perfectworry does; it's just a way of letting yourself do something fun by pretending you have to do it as part of a program. If you already have no trouble doing fun things, it might not seem so compelling.

[chordatesrock]

Have you already seen the discussion we had on Cameron's spirituality?

Beyond that, all I can say, having actively tried to ignore her spirituality, is that it reminds me of very soft polytheism, the kind where they believe all religions are real because they don't believe any are true, and all the gods are just people's personifications of archetypes. The God-concept seems a bit like Neo-Wicca to me, though I'm not yet noticing any similarities in praxis, and I'm sure actual pagans would probably laugh her out of the community for monotheism, but the way she conceives of the divine reminds me strongly of soft polytheism.

[perfectworry]

The morning pages are definitely Cameron's best idea in this book. Over summer vacation, I've been writing them by hand every day; usually, I only write by hand on days off from work, which would be Saturday/Sunday. I like writing by hand and it feels better than typing on my laptop (in OmmWriter) but it also takes me a lot longer to write out three pages longhand than type 750 words, so I won't be able to keep it up every day once vacation ends in a week and a half. (Boo.)

So far this summer, I've used my morning pages as a place to plot my Camp NaNoWriMo project, get to know my characters better, sort out my conflicted feelings about a relationship, and practice tarot. (I've added a daily tarot card to my morning pages; sometimes I ask about whatever the theme has been that morning, or sometimes if I'm all over the place, it's just a card to consider for the rest of the day.)

[rejectionchallenge]

Morning pages are a good idea. The artist's date is a good idea. Reading deprivation works really well for me and I'm actually planning to do a three-day total-except-for-posting-here deprivation next week (since my busy period at work is winding down), even though I really dislike the reading-deprivation chapter and its many assumptions about why / how / with what consequences I actually read. I have thoughts about the daily tasks and chapters that I will probably save for the end.


I do the morning pages about half the time. I was doing all right for a while and then stopped, and now I'm doing all right again. I attempt the morning tasks when I can, though not many of them have been really helpful. That is, there was a lot of helpful-ish stuff in the early chapters, and now it often feels to me like Cameron is just marking time. But that may be my fault, as the interpreter? We'll see, I guess!

[inkdust]

I've done the morning pages exactly once. I think for me this hasn't been the right time to try to institute a new routine like that, and I make the additional excuse that I already write a page every evening, but I'd like to try morning pages again at some point. For me, it's been nice just to read the post every day before I get started working, a good reminder that there are other people working on similar goals. And I appreciate your frank tone about Cameron, complaining or not.

[dreamwriteremmy]

I can't remember if you are the same person I said this to before. I use morning pages loosely and I use her advice from her latest book which is a parenting book ("any time squashing in words is fine and not reaching the minimum 3 pages/750 words ideal recommendation is also fine" is the basic summary). The idea is to mostly be writing.

[inkdust]

That makes sense. I suppose according to that idea I'm already doing enough :)