The Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy (Week 11)
On acceptance, success and creating your Artist's Altar
Welcome to Life after Trauma; I’m Clare Egan. We’re in Week 11 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.
Our next virtual gathering will be on Sunday June 8th at 1pm Irish Time. Please leave a comment below if you’d like to attend.
An opportunity for you
Before wrapping up The Artist’s Way, I wanted to give you - the members of this community who’ve been chatting with me in comments, Notes and our virtual gatherings - a chance to share a little of what The Artist’s Way has meant for you. I’m planning to do a roundup post on June 17th, and would love to include your perspectives, as well as a link to your newsletter or another creative project.
I’ve made a short google form to capture your stories. Please be sure to share your experiences by Friday, June 13th. I can’t wait to hear from you!
The Artist’s Way Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy
Chapter 11 is about nurturing and accepting ourselves as artists. Julia Cameron encourages us to explore behaviors that strengthen our spiritual base and creative power. The chapter begins with a reflection on money and art. Sometimes, our creative work sells. Sometimes it doesn’t. But those market forces operate independently of the inherent value of our work. Cameron encourages us to find a sense of autonomy away from the whims of the marketplace, which is a beautiful ideal though I suspect it’ll take time (& a strong safety net) for me to achieve that. That said, I love how she encourages us to see that creativity as its own reward: “As an artist, my self-respect comes from doing the work”.
I often think of my creative work as a relationship. When I show up to write, I’m strengthening my relationship with the page. Sometimes it feels like work. Other times it feels like play. But I’m committed to showing up, no matter how it feels. I want to honour how my creativity helps me feel more alive. I’d love to publish books and build a more sustainable career, but that’s a bonus. Feeling more like myself through my creative work is more than enough for me.
“As success comes to us, we must be vigilant.”
Last week, I was looking for more guidance on what happens to our creativity when we become successful. I didn’t get it in that chapter, but there is a detailed section on it here. Cameron encourages us to find satisfaction in the creative process independent of the outcome, and to be cautious about getting stuck in old patterns. We must find a way to stay connected to our inner artist, and to prioritise play over replicating the successes of our past.
I got a lot from the section on making creativity a physical, rather than an intellectual act. Cameron encourages us to move out of our heads and into our bodies. This was a huge element in my recovery from sexual violence too. I needed to rebuild a relationship with my body.
“Exercise is often the thing that moves us from stagnation to inspiration, from problem to solution, from self-pity to self-respect”
Cameron writes about the value of moving meditations which can unearth our body’s deeper wisdom. For me, it’s taking long walks in nature. Before writing this essay, I took my ideas out for a walk. With each step, I felt my body calm and recentre. When I sat down to write, the words came easily. I needed the walk to expel the anxious energy of a looming deadline. Once I felt more rooted in my body, I was able to write to you.
The modern conception of exercise is that it requires special clothes and the input of fitness professionals. Many people think of it as something separate from our day to day lives, but I believe movement is intrinsic to our experience as human animals. We need to move our bodies in the same way that we need to feed and bathe them. Whenever I’m grappling with something, I take it out for a walk with me. It doesn’t always solve the problem, but it helps me to feel more capable of surmounting it.
Cameron writes about exercise as a way to “direct the traffic flow of [our] overcrowded minds”. The “rhythmic, repetitive action transfers the locus of the brain’s energies from the logical to the artistic hemisphere. It is where inspiration bubbles up, untrammeled by the constraints of logic”. I was a little irked by her descriptions of people’s bodies (rude! fatphobic! unnecessary!), but the core message of using gentle, rhythmic movement to unlock a deeper calm and create more space for our creativity to flourish resonated deeply with me.
Building your Artistic Altar
The main task this week is to create an Artistic Altar. I appreciated Cameron’s acknowledgement that many of us come from punitively religious backgrounds. She encourages us to become more spiritually centered through creative rituals of our own. As I read about Artistic Altars, I realised that I have lots of things that could live on mine scattered around my home. I don’t have a lot of space, but there’s a windowsill in my office that I’d like to desonate as my Artistic Altar. From my desk, I often look up and see geese gliding in majestic Vs across the sky. As I write to you, the rain is falling in heavy sheets. I’m so grateful for that window. It’s a constant reminder that whatever stresses I’m dealing with, the world is out there. I can stand in front of it, gulp a few breaths of fresh air and feel anchored by looking at the horizon. I think it’s a perfect spot for my Artistic Altar. Here are a few things I plan to put there:
A dish of shells I’ve collected from different beaches all over the world
A Chinese Money Plant that’s dying, alongside a baby plant that sprouted from it. (Every time I look at it, it feels like creative possibility in action!)
A photo of my mother smiling
A candle
A globe totem I bought 15+ years ago to remind myself of the vastness of our planet
Some honey my friend Tina sent me, made by her bees. (I’m not sure if this is practical - I don’t want to attract flies!)
Some offerings from nature. (When I teach writing classes, I often encourage my students to find something small from nature to keep close to them as they write. In primary school, we had a classroom Nature Table where we kept the things we’d found in nature. It’s a beautiful practice, and something I’d like to make more a part of my creative life.)
What are you planning to place on your Artistic Altar? I’d love to hear!
Other thoughts & reflections from Chapter Eleven:
“I do not need to be rich but I do need to be richly supported. I cannot allow my emotional and intellectual life to stagnate or the work will show it.” I love the idea of being “richly supported”. I want to explore what that means to me in my Morning Pages this week.
“Creativity is a spiritual practice. It is not something that can be perfected, finished and set aside.” I’m going to add this to my personal set of affirmations!
“To be an artist is to recognise the particular” I feel like a broken record, but for me creating beautiful art is all about paying attention. It grows from a deep attunement with the world around me, and my job is to translate that onto the page. It requires focus, quiet, time and a deep commitment to the practice of creative living.
“To be an artist.. is to not keep trying to be something that we aren’t” Yes! Creative work is about becoming more of ourselves. It’s about uncovering who we are at our core, independent of whatever the world tells us we should be.
“As artists, we are spiritual sharks”. The ruthless truth is that if we don’t keep moving, we sink to the bottom and die.” This feels a little off to me. I’ve often had to pause my creative life (due to grief, mental illness, trauma etc) but I’ve been able to come back to it when I felt ready to. Creativity has been with me throughout my life, though my ability to engage with it has fluctuated.
“We insist on a straight and narrow path when the artist’s way is a spiral path” This is also true for trauma recovery and indeed life in general. There is no one way. Life unfolds in loops, not a straight line.
“Creativity is not a business, although it may generate much business” This feels like an important distinction.
“You don't need to overturn a successful career in order to find creative fulfillment. It is necessary to overturn each day’s schedule slightly to allow for those small adjustments in daily trajectory that, over the long haul, alter the course and the satisfactions of our careers” This is very useful advice. Even if you can’t change your entire career, you can find pockets of time to flex your creative muscles. It mightn’t feel like much but over time, those slices of creative exploration can shape the trajectory of your life.
“Exercise teaches the rewards of the process. It teaches the sense of satisfaction over small tasks well done.” This is very true for me. Even on the hardest day, I can usually manage a walk.
In this chapter, Cameron asks us to reflect on whether having a 9-5 job might enable creativity or stifle it. I’ve found that earning a living in something separate from my creative work has brought me a lot of peace. It allows me to achieve a certain level of financial security, while still giving me room to flex my creative muscles outside of work. For me, the key is to find paid employment that isn’t too emotionally taxing. I need low-stress work where I have a certain level of autonomy. At the end of the workday, I need to be able to leave my work aside and return to my life. I’m curious about your experiences of this too. Has 9-5 work been a help or a hindrance to your creative dreams?
Tasks:
Build my Artist’s Altar. I’ve started gathering a few things, but plan to add to it throughout the week. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share a picture on Friday!
Tape myself reading the Basic Principles, and use them in meditation. The sound of my own voice makes me cringe, but I think this could be useful. I’m going to give it a try.
Inventory how you have changed throughout The Artist’s Way. I’m curious to think about this, though I know I’ll also need a lot of self-compassion for the things that I haven’t managed to change in the last few months. I want to give myself credit for my attempts and experiments, even if they weren’t “successful”.
List five ways you plan to nurture yourself in the next 6 months. (Courses you’ll take, supplies you’ll allow yourself, Artist’s Dates, holidays etc)
Re-examine your God concept. Does your belief system limit or support your creative expansion? Are you open minded about altering your concept of God?
Best of luck with The Artist’s Way this week. It’s been beautiful to watch our collective creativity unfold over the last few months. We’re so close to the end, and I’m excited to celebrate our achievements!
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Clare, seeing your post got me to finally sit down and read Chap 11 & it’s one of my favorites so far because of its emphasis on acceptance, nurturing our artist selves and separating our creativity and its outcome to the market/marketability. Creative work must exist for itself: we create because we must, we are called to do it & on the best days we feel contentment & joy in our creativity. I loved your entire essay here, Clare, rich with reflections that help me appreciate the chapter even more. I so admire how deeply you are engaging with the Artist’s Way (and your walking path is so beautiful!) I love the idea of an artist’s altar. I realize however in the years that I have been living alone, post-divorce, post-caregiving, I’ve turned my entire apartment spaces into altars to being an artist. Every bookcase has shells, stones, feathers, cards, photographs. A large tray has three Buddhas of varying sizes, affirmation card decks, oracle cards. Candles and incense or essential oil diffusers in every room. I am a woman who has always wanted a room of her own for her art, and yet all during my marriage I never had that—my office was simply that. So now I am more than making up for it, with beauty and inspiration everywhere I look. It’s been important for me to constantly remind myself ‘I am an artist. I have a creative soul that needs nurturing and I will tend to it.’ I love the idea of your windowsill altar. I hope you take a photo for us. In other reflections, I know I’ve not been taking my artist on dates. Not once have I cracked open the painting set and sketch book and markers I bought. I need to remedy that this week. My suffering adult self these past months of healing from back pain (now making much progress!) needs her little girl to play. Maybe then the block I am experiencing to return to my novel in progress will lessen.