The Artist’s Way Reflections – Page 2

complete aw In previous posts in this Artist’s Way Reflections column, I’ve written about having a two-decade relationship with this landmark book on creativity and its basic tools (Morning Pages and the Artist Date) and its essays and exercises and tasks, all aimed and at opening, or re-opening a connection to creativity. Discovering and recovering your artistic self.

And now that the Basic Tools have been covered, next week I’ll move on to the main text of the book.

I’m hoping that some of you will join me on this Artist’s Way journey. Later in the post, I’m going to give a sketch of my plans for doing the book and this column, and different ways to join in. To find that, you can skip ahead to the section titled The Plan.

First though, I wanted to give a little history on my latest re-launch of the journey.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Re-Starting the Journey” →

Blindness and Disability, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: The Artist Date

August 13, 2020June 27, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Artist Date In The Artist’s Way, the seminal book on creativity, author Julia Cameron introduces two Basic Tools, after the introduction and before the week-by-week chapters. These two Basic Tools, she says, are the cornerstone to connecting with creativity.

The first is Morning Pages, discussed in last week’s Artist’s Way Reflections column, the practice of writing three handwritten pages of whatever comes to mind every morning. I’ve wrestled with these pages, but ultimately find them to be helpful, a way to connect to what I’m actually feeling, which isn’t always easy but is in its own way grounding. They’re also a good source of fresh ideas, a way to puzzle through problems and often a place to dump the mental waste before starting the day.

The second Basic Tool is the Artist Date. You’re supposed to go on a “date” with your artist self once a week. Do something fun for an hour and no one else is allowed to come along. Quality time with your creative side.

And I’m going to be real. I get the theory behind it, it all sounds great when Julia Cameron extols the values of an Artist Date. But in actuality, I hate it.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: The Artist Date” →

Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: Morning Pages

August 6, 2020June 27, 2024 Chrys Buckley

MPs In The Artist’s Way, aka AW, a book I’m blogging about weekly, one of the first thing that the author, Julia Cameron, introduces is the practice of Morning Pages. As far as I know, this is also true for subsequent spin-offs and sequels. Morning Pages are the cornerstone of all her work on discovering, recovering, and reconnecting with creativity.

So, that raises (not begs) the question of what are they and why are they so important. Morning Pages are simple at face value. When you wake up, you’re supposed to write three pages of long-hand writing, about anything you damn well please. The keys are that they’re supposed to be in the morning, they’re supposed to be long-hand and they’re supposed to be private–even you yourself aren’t supposed to look at them for awhile.

The morning part of it is to clear your head, dump out all your little thoughts and worries and random tidbits floating in your head that otherwise could nag at you for the rest of the day. And morning because maybe when we’re still groggy, there’s less self-censorship. That’s part of the privacy aspect, that they’re never to be shown to anyone because once they are, the other person’s judgements come in, and so do your own.

To that point, though this is probably a story for another day, I did once have a boyfriend who told me, drunk off his ass when we were in a fight, that he’d read mine and then made fun of me for things I’d written. Fun freakin’ times.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: Morning Pages” →

Metaphysics, Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – My Origin Story

July 30, 2020June 27, 2024 Chrys Buckley

AW1 This past March, I picked up The Artist’s Way again after many years away from this famous creativity book. It’s been an interesting ride since then–expansive, challenging, difficult, combative at times (I definitely don’t resonate with everything in there), illuminating. So, it’s one of the things I wanted to post about when jumping back into blogging and thinking a lot about creativity.

I went back to The Artist’s Way, or AW as it’s known in my journals and to-do lists and calendars, after some tough decisions that set off a real transition time for me that I reeeeeally want to write about but can’t right now. It had been awhile since I’d cracked the book, and it makes sense to talk about my origin story with this book.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – My Origin Story” →