The Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Strength (Week 8)
⏰ On time, encouragement & creative grief
Welcome to Life after Trauma; I’m Clare Egan. We’re in Week 8 of The Artist’s Way, a community exploration of the intersection of creativity and recovery.
You know the drill: each week, we read a new chapter of The Artist’s Way and do our best to write our Morning Pages and schedule an Artist’s Date. On Tuesdays, I share my reflections on that week’s theme and on Fridays, we gather to share our experiences in the weekly thread. Huge thanks to
, , , and Michelle for coming along to our second virtual gathering on Sunday. I really enjoyed our conversation. 💕Our next (& maybe final?) gathering will be on Sunday June 8th at 1pm Irish Time. Please leave a comment below if you’d like to attend.
Here’s an overview of our schedule for May:
The Artist’s Way Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength
When I think about the limitations in my creative life, there are two main ones: money and time. The deeper I get into The Artist’s Way this time around, the more I think I need to add a third: my own self-limitations.
For as long as I remember, I’ve dreamed about having wide open stretches of time to devote to my writing. I got that during the pandemic (& wrote my first novel), but I also learned that a life centred only on my creative work (however fulfilling that may be) is a barren one. I want a full life. I want to be in love, to be part of a community and to spend time in nature. I want to stretch myself physically and emotionally as well as creatively. Creativity is important to me, but it isn’t my whole world.
As a younger person, I trusted that my work would never let me down. It would never abandon me. I devoted so much time to it, knowing that it would always be there for me. I haven’t always been creatively successful1, but developing my creative muscles has served me very well. Chapter 8 was a welcome reminder to focus on consistent daily actions. I love a big picture plan. I love to daydream, although it often spirals into worry. But when I’m doing that, I miss out on being able to make steady, plodding progress toward advancing a creative vision. I’d like to prioritise that more in the weeks ahead.
Cameron almost lost me early in the opening section of this chapter. She compares artistic losses to miscarriage, emotional incest and sexual harrassment. Clearly, they are not the same thing and these comparisons felt both inaccurate and deeply insensitive. I’m sure people struggle terribly with their artistic failures, but it’s not the same as living alongside serious trauma.
“In order to recover our sense of hope and the courage to create, we must acknowledge and mourn the scars that are blocking us”
My first reaction to this sentence was despair. I’m not sure I have it in me to do any more mourning right now! The weight of it is too much, but I suspect there is more to be grieved. I’ve lived through some significant creative disappointments. I rarely acknowledge them, but they hurt me deeply. Perhaps it’s time to give myself some space to honour this grief.
This chapter also talks about the need for encouragement, a word which made me tear up as soon as I saw it. What I wouldn’t give for a little encouragement?! I’ve always been hard on myself. My internal voice says I’m wasteful with my time, that I prioritise the wrong things, that I’m not a real artist. I know that’s not true, but it’s often how I feel. It was only when I saw the word encouragement that I thought I could cheer myself on a little more. I could cheerlead, rather than criticise. I really needed that reminder!
“Every loss must always be viewed as a potential gain”
Cameron’s tendency to use absolutist language (always, never, must, should etc) always bothers me. This line stung, in particular. Sometimes there’s nothing to be gained from loss. Sometimes it’s just agonisingly painful. It can be hard to accept the finality of this loss, but denying it serves no-one. Cameron views loss as an orientation tool: “How can this loss serve me? Where does it point my work?”, she asks. These are fruitful questions, and can help to reorientate you but it’s not always possible to just shake off the agony of the loss. “Metabolise pain as energy,” she advises without acknowledging that pain can often be completely paralysing. She cites an example of one creative who always tries to find new outlets for their creativity. There’s something to admire in that can-do spirit. It’s another form of creativity to always be looking for another option, to see our work more expansively and imagine it beyond the constraints of what currently exists. But that’s not always easy to do. When you’re grappling with loss, I think it’s OK to just grieve.
“A creative life is grounded on many, many small steps and very, very few large leaps.”
This was the most useful lesson in chapter 8 for me. Our society (& my own mindset) overemphasizes the finished product. We fetishize seeing our book’s cover in the window of our favourite bookstore but “creativity lies not in the done but in doing”. I remember hearing Ta-Nehisi Coates talk about his award-winning book ‘Between the World and Me’. He described it as feeling dead to him. He’d spent years working on it in private, and when it was published, it belonged to the world. He had already moved on to his next work. When I dream about the day my first book will be in my hands, I deny myself the joy of being in the weeds of my story, of trying to figure out how to bring it to life. The published book is a monument to creative work, but once it’s in the world, the hard (& deeply fulfilling) creative work is done. There’s a grief in that too, I think.
This chapter also helped me realise how much time I spend thinking about my art, rather than just doing it. Cameron encourages us to remember the “dignity of art as process”. She suggests that we leave aside the odds of success or failure, and just do the work. Everyday. Consistently. This chapter is a rallying cry for the steady daily plod of steps in the right direction and it’s a lesson I want to bring with me into the weeks ahead.
Other thoughts & reflections from Chapter Eight:
“We must remember that our artist is a child and that what we can handle intellectually far outstrips what we can handle emotionally”
“The halls of academia, with their preference for lofty intellectual theorems, do little to support the life of the forest floor” There’s a long section in this chapter the intersection between academia and creative work. It didn’t feel relevant for me but I imagine academics would find plenty to critique in Cameron’s perspective of that world. If that’s you, please feel free to share your feedback in the comments.
“The entire thrust of intellectualism runs counter to the creative impulse. For an artist to become overly cerebral is to become crippled.” This is a mindset I’d like to shift in my own life. I often approach my creative work with a business mindset. I think about the most efficient way of writing something. I wonder about what might find an audience. I make strategic plans for my work. But in the end, I think I'd be better served by leaving the strategy aside and just focusing on play. This is a stretch goal for me, but one I’d really like to experiment with in the weeks ahead. (
and I have been chatting about this in the comments too - a playful approach can be useful for a lot of us!)
“The key to career resiliency is self-empowerment and choice” Cameron writes. I’d also add money, time, support, resources…. 🙃
“The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes any action difficult” Oh if only it was that simple..
“Instead of painting anything, I will worry about it some more” Guilty!
“Fantasizing about pursuing our art full-time, we fail to pursue it part-time - or not at all” Also guilty!
“Work begets work. Small actions lead us to the larger movements in our creative lives” This could be my new mantra!
“Art is the act of structuring time” I love this concept and want to explore it more in this week’s Morning Pages. It feels like a very rich vein for exploration.
“I’m too old” is an evasive tactic. It is always used to avoid facing fear.” This is another example of harmful, absolutist language which makes me crave a more nuanced perspective. As we get older, our perspective on life changes in ways that I’m not sure I (at 37) can really understand. As I get older, I expect my perspective on life and creativity to evolve. I imagine that I’ll feel differently about what I want to prioritise and what kind of creative legacy I might like to leave behind. I’d really welcome comments on this one too!
Tasks
When I read the tasks this week, I could feel that I wasn’t up for some of the heavy emotional work. Just reading the affirmations made me tear up, so I knew I didn't have capacity to make architectural drawings of my deepest creative dreams, or to imagine what a perfectly nurturing childhood might have been like. I don’t have the emotional resources for that this week, so I’m skipping them. This is your reminder that you can do that too: you are the authority on you and you can make The Artist’s Way whatever you want it to be. I’ve gotten a lot from this book, but I’ve also benefited from giving myself some space from the strictures of it. I really encourage you to do the same.
When I first saw the list of affirmations, I started to cry. That tells me that 1) they touched a nerve and 2) there’s more going on for me in this moment than I can really see or understand. I suspect it’s grief. Grief for the loss of some of my creative dreams, but also the time I spent trying to rebuild my life after trauma. I lost a lot of time, and the weight of that can be difficult to bear. I’m going to try to work with these affirmations this week. Hopefully they can help me believe that I deserve a more creative life, even when it feels like I'm scrambling to breathe.
“Watch yourself for a week and notice the way you will pick up an anxious thought, almost like a joint, to blow off - or at least delay - your next creative action” This is a task I found in the chapter itself, rather than in the tasks section. I’m curious to observe this in action this week.
Complete the “Early Patternings” exercise which seeks to untangle childhood conditioning from my present day creative dreams. I expect this to unpack a lot of difficult stuff, and I want to make sure I’ve enough capacity to wade into those murky waters. If I feel up to it this week, I’ll do it. If not, I’ll leave it aside for another time.
Ideal day: plan a perfect day in your life. This could be fun to explore.
Best of luck with The Artist’s Way this week.
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That's an understatement!
“ It was only when I saw the word encouragement that I thought I could cheer myself on a little more. I could cheerlead, rather than criticise. I really needed that reminder!”
I just had that experience reading your share about this, Claire. I’m not in a great place right now, and I feel like there’s little bits of light reaching me through the darkness, and reminding me of things I can do that will help. This was one of them. Thank you.
So sorry to miss the call on Sun. I’d love to make the one in June. I completely forgot on Sun, promptly remembered about 11pm last night, and was sad I’d missed it!
The “gently” affirmation especially got to me as well, though several of them do.
I wonder also if the author’s approach to “lets use this feeling to orient” is a reflection of the times the book was written in, as nowadays, it’s more common to hear people promoting presence, being with, and feeling first, allowing ourselves to have our feelings, acceptance, compassion etc. That didn’t seem a thing back then, at least not where I grew up! Just now feeling grateful as I write this for being aware of these thing now, as my younger self needed this all so much and didn’t get it.
Unless it’s times of actual emergency or stress for me, I try to allow the orienting or “next step” to naturally reveal itself. Much of the time it seems t come out of the feeling, and the paradoxical transformation that seems to come from just allowing ourselves to feel and to be with ourselves, and let the emotions flow through us. I definitely don’t always manage this, though I wish I could somehow perfectly do so!
Clare, such a rich and interesting and as always critical, sharp, honest unpacking of how this chapter did & didn’t work for you, I so appreciate that! I nodded in agreement with much of what you observed, first off that comparison of miscarriage or sexual trauma to an artistic disappointment—very insensitive. I did pause at the idea of grieving for our artistic losses. For every rejection received on the novel I’d been querying (67 and counting, that is, for those who responded at all), I’d push my disappointment down and say c’mon, the antidote is to send out yet another query. Now I am letting myself feel the pain of a novel I worked so hard on for 3 years and many drafts in limbo right now as I figure out what to do next (and those mantras put a lump in my throat too because it’s hard to believe ‘I’m a talented artist’ when gatekeepers keep the gates firmly locked). And yes, the scarcity of time around age, as I mentioned in the money chapter, this is a major block for me I have to keep setting aside. I am 65 (oh to be 37 again, my young friend😀). My life coach (for lack of a better word, she’s as much an emotional therapist) has talked to me of ‘divine timing,’ and to see myself as the ‘door,’ not the do-er. That pieces of writing, of creative work, are meant to come to me, come through me, out into the world and I don’t have control over the timing. Well I suppose I would if I self published and I have a novelist friend who is urging me to do that. But the allure (credibility I guess) of a publisher makes me hesitate. And of course that’s worth considering: if we truly believe in our work and ourselves as artists why do we need permission from someone else to put our work out in the world? I know all the business and marketing arguments but there’s a core question there about giving up my own agency. So this Chapter 8 is really a big wake up call for me. I will give some of the exercises a try. Like you Clare I can make elaborate schedules and lists to do my art rather than actually do it. My new novel has been neglected for months. Hoping this week is the turning point where I return to it with the same delight I felt last year when I began writing it.