As avid readers of my newsletter learned last week, I’m dropping a 4-week guide to “The Artist’s Way,” where I’ll be condensing a 12-week program into a month — let’s get this wrapped up by Thanksgiving!
If you’ve ever attempted “The Artist’s Way” — which I’ll be abbreviating going forward as AW — you’re likely familiar with the tools of the program and the frustrating failure to stick with them. Here’s the thing. Even though I’m a radical who’s claiming you can reap the rewards of AW in a 1/3rd of the time, I still feel, regardless of whether or not you’re an AW acolyte, these tools can add a lot to your life as a creative.
So I’m suggesting you stick with doing the daily Morning Pages and weekly Artist’s Dates for the duration of November. Three months is a big ask, but 30 days? That’s just a week more than it takes to establish a habit.
And as we’re heading into the hecticness of the holiday season, it’s beneficial to have practices that ground us and set aside time for ourselves. The end of the year is also a time when many people are prone to seasonal depression or ruminating on all the things they didn’t accomplish (as if the world wasn’t burning!). Dedicated time for reflection can help you navigate those feelings.
However, just because I see the power in using these tools, I understand that they just aren’t always convenient. So I’m sharing some ideas for how to make them fit your life.
If this is your first AW rodeo, here’s a quick explanation of how the tools are supposed to work from Julia Cameron herself.
Think of this combination of tools in terms of a radio receiver and transmitter. It is a two-step, two-directional process: out and then in. Doing your morning pages, you are sending — notifying yourself and the universe of your dreams, dissatisfactions, hopes. Doing your artist date, you are receiving — opening yourself to insight, inspiration, guidance.
But First, Let’s Talk Time Management
A popular refrain online right now is, “It’s the phones.” As schools are experiencing drastic improvements in children’s attention spans and social skills after banning smartphones and more and more studies are being released about the detriments of social media usage, people are increasingly questioning if their phones are detracting more from their life than adding to them.
Regardless of how many tips and tricks I give you to make these tools work for you, they are going to take some amount of time. You can’t jumpstart your creative recovery without spending some time being creative, my friends. Besides social media, where comparison runs rampant, can be a creativity killer by stirring up your doubts and self-consciousness.
I believe the easiest place to find some spare time, is by wrangling your smartphone usage. Even if you aren’t devoted to social media, you’re probably losing time in your inbox or on shopping sites or rooting around on Reddit or skimming Substack. If you’ve ever gotten one of those Sunday screentime alerts from your iPhone and felt ashamed, now is the time to repurpose some of those lost hours toward your creativity.
By this point, there are probably things you’ve tried to that have worked and things that have failed for you. For some people it’s enough to keep their phone in another room — out of sight, out of mind! Others use apps on their devices to limit their screentime. And people just have self-control…? That is not me.
I use Brick (a physical block you have to tap your phone against to regain access — this is an affiliate link for 10% off) to brick my phone before bed each night and the next day, I try not to unbrick my phone until I’ve finished a major task or it’s noon. It just helps me make the most of my mornings without wasting time skimming on my phone when I first wake up or find myself distractedly staring at my screen instead of reading before bed.
I have sites and apps for social media and shopping blocked from me when I’m trying to focus. Because I will wake up and it might cross my mind I need some new winter clothes and the next thing I know, I’ve spent $300 before I’ve even brushed my teeth. Whereas later in the day, I’d probably feel like my sweater stash is fine. Doing research for a purchase that I don’t urgently need, also gives me a sense of productivity that robs me of using my time in an actually useful way.
All I’m saying, is if I’m going to fritter away hours, I’d rather be doing that getting artsy than playing into the technocapitalist dreams of billionaires. But you do what works for you!
The Morning Pages 🥱
Okay, back to you Julia.
Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness.
Let’s skip ahead a little.
There is no wrong way to do morning pages. These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art. Or even writing. I stress that point to reassure the nonwriters working with this book. Writing is simply one of the tools. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page, and writing down whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.
The morning pages aren’t supposed to sound smart — although sometimes they might. Most times they won’t, and nobody will ever know except you. Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages except you.
Confession: When I told y’all in the intro post last week that I finished AW, I wasn’t being entirely honest. While I did finish the book, I abandoned the morning pages pretty early on in the process. I am notoriously bad at journaling. But I do want to get better at it because having journals to reference is really beneficial for memoir writers.
So when I say, I understand your struggle, I understand your struggle.
But one thing I notice when I’m doing morning pages is that it gets my writing brain activated faster. My brain will begin gnawing away on plot points or essay ideas, instead of ruminating on the firehose of news I’ve just taken down during my doomscrolling jaunt across the internet. I think they work and are worth figuring out how to do.
What do I advise? Cheat.
Okay, cheat might be a strong word, but you’ve got to trick yourself into getting them done. I had large aspirations on Friday to post up a cute little French coffee shop and do my morning pages. I thought it’d be a strong show of commitment to kick them off a day early. But alas, my matcha was ready sooner than I expected and too my hands were too full of patisserie to write a single thing.
From the photo, you’ll see I’m repurposing the journal I decorated for the Joy Journal class I recently taught. I never got into doing a daily catalog of delights, so there’s still plenty of pages to put to use.
What you might notice about this notebook is that it’s very small. Look, Julia didn’t say we had to use a full-sized 8.5x11 notebook for our morning pages, just that we had to do three of them and they had to be handwritten. Check. Check.
Since the morning pages aren’t designed for returning to (In the book, Julia advises you wait at least 8 months before you peek back at previous pages) I figured I can scale up to a larger notebook once I’m in the rhythm of getting it done. Filling up three small pages doesn’t feel quite so daunting.
If your block is that you don’t want to muss up a cute notebook with your throwaway thoughts, then don’t. You can use an old notebook for these purposes or use a legal pad you’ve had lying around for forever, just get them done.
Another procrastinating busting method I’ve implemented with other tasks is setting a timer. Say you’ll write for 10 or 15-minutes, surely you have that amount of time to spare, you’ll tell yourself. And you can endure just about anything for 15-minutes (except running, I’m gonna tap out at like the 3-minute mark…). If you’ve finished three pages by the time the timer has gone off, great! If not you can try again tomorrow. Or…
What I’ve discovered is that the timer is just a trick to get started. Once I’m started, I’m typically pretty committed to completing the task at hand even if it stretches out past the set amount of time. Whether that’s washing my dishes, scrubbing my shower or brain dumping three pages worth of thoughts into my tiny little notebook.
You can also try task pairing. Maybe you don’t let yourself enjoy your coffee until the pages are done. Or you figure out what the audio equivalent is of three handwritten pages and you fill up a voice note with your thoughts while out on your morning walk.
Shift up the time! This one I’ve not had any success with. I feel like if I turn my morning pages into evening pages ,they’re even less likely to get done. I also like firing up my writing brain as early in the day as possible. Julia agrees.
All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the mornings stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover’s eyes — this stuff eddies through our subconscious and muddies our days. Get it on the page.
But for the night owls among us, maybe shifting the time works for you. Or maybe you have a hellish commute and not a minute to spare in the morning, so your pages get done over lunch. Whatever you decide, decide to stick with it. (Also, my morning took a few unexpected detours yesterday and I didn’t get my morning pages done until 8P but it still felt rewarding to get them completed!)
What ideas have helped you in the past?
Artist’s Dates are the Artist’s Way!
Let’s let JuJu explain the artist’s date.
An artist’s date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers. You do not take anyone this date but you and your inner artist a.k.a. your creative child. That means no lovers, friends, spouses, children — no taggers-on of any stripe.
Julia goes on to make a series of points about how you have to invest time in any relationship you value, that includes with yourself and the creative aspect of yourself. She encourages you to seek out delight and aim for “mystery, not mastery.”
As a single, child-free, currently unemployed writer, my entire life is like one long artist’s date (only interrupted by the anxiety of figuring out how to navigate a massive drop in income under Capitalism). For me the challenge was, how do I make this special? How can I be intentional with this?
For my artist’s date on Friday, I decided to dress up a little like I would for an actual date instead of throwing my hair up in buns and pulling on my yoga pants and a hoodie. It was Halloween, so I finally wore the orange blouse I never wear because it looks “too Halloween-y.”
Typically Bricking my phone is an at-home activity, but I kept it bricked when I headed out to force myself to be fully present on my artist’s date. Instagram doesn’t need insta posts from me.
The French coffee shop was new, so I enjoyed taking in their decor choices and spending some time in an aesthetic corner eating a puff pastry. Then I took a leisurely walk with matcha in hand and enjoyed the brisk fall air. Something about walking about with a drink in hand really puts me in a positive place (for the low-low price of $8!).
My next stop was the new Calder Gardens in Philly. It’s a museum dedicated to Calder’s art. I grew up in Louisville often passing “Red Feather,” a red steel structure of Calder’s that I had no idea was a Calder because I was not previously familiar with this artist and had never thought to learn more about the sculpture. But when I started seeing ads for the new museum, I recognized the style and delved in deeper.
Inside the museum, I shrugged off my coat and jammed it in a locker, then wandered around the beautiful blond wood facility and took in the steel sculptures and steel mobiles hung on thin wires.
It felt appropriate to go to a museum for the first for my artist’s date. Something about the whimsy of a mobile contrasting it’s steel materials felt very inspiring to me. The long walk home provided time for me to reflect on the art I’d just seen.
If you’re someone with many demands on your time, your artist’s dates might look different. You might have to ask yourself if you can get up early or sneak out late, to squeeze in some solo time. You might also need to get a partner on board with managing the children while you invest some much needed time in yourself.
Maybe your artist’s date can’t be a two block, so instead of one weekly date, you steal a few 20-minute windows after work to indulge in something — whether that’s a hot fudge sundae in your car, parked to face a grove of trees or sneaking off to an art gallery on your lunch break at work or maybe you buy yourself a travel watercolor kit and get a painting session in where you can.
If budget is the issue, do some research for free activities in your city and compile a list you can choose something from quick, instead of having to come up with something every single week.
Libraries host many free activities and there might be things you’re already paying for that you’re not fully taking advantage of (many museums have reciprocal entry to other museums if you have a membership). See if the local university is doing a lecture you’d enjoy. Maybe you sign up for a low cost walking tour and get to know the architecture in your city — hell, maybe you plan your own walking tour! There are probably free sculpture gardens in your area you can visit. You can also dust off some old art supplies or other abandoned hobby, and get back into it!
As Julia writes and you’ve probably heard many times elsewhere, you can’t draw from an empty well. To be creative, you have to replenish your creative bucket. And you have to remind yourself you’re a creative being. You weren’t put on this planet to simply get from point A to point B in the most efficient way everyday.
It’s time for a revival.
We begin next week.