🎨 I AM AN ARTIST

Dear friends,

If you’ve spent any time with me in the past three months, I’ve probably told you that I’ve been doing The Artist’s Way. (Thanks for listening to me talk about it, even if you think it sounds like a cult.) I’m here to report to you that I HAVE COMPLETED ALL TWELVE WEEKS!!!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me give you a quick introduction. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity is an artistic & spiritual self-help workbook first published in 1992. In it, writer and director Julia Cameron lays out a twelve-week program for recovering your creativity and working through the blocks that stop you from doing your art. (And yes, the format is an echo of twelve-step programs; Cameron is in recovery and brings a lot of that experience to the book!)

When I picked up my book again at the start of this process, I remembered the first time I tried The Artist’s Way. I bought the book about six years ago, after I got spectacularly dumped from a terrible relationship, and I was looking for ways to rediscover who I was and what I liked and how to trust myself again. In hindsight, I was definitely not ready for the amount of self-examination The Artist’s Way asks you to do. I don’t think I even made it past Week Two.

I came back to it this summer for Cody Cook-Parrott’s book study, and I felt much more ready this time around. Here are a few things I took away from the experience!

Taking Myself Less Seriously

A huge part of The Artist’s Way is rediscovering how you like to play. Play involves reconnecting with your inner child, taking time to be silly, following your intuition, and letting yourself do things imperfectly. I do lean towards the perfectionist side of the scale, so trying some new things and letting myself be imperfect at them was a particularly great exercise for me.

Before my vacation this summer, I bought a cheap film camera on a whim to take with me. I’ve taken some film photos before, but they usually come out a little wonky or washed-out. I took a lot of pics on our two weeks away, and while some of them did have my thumb covering up the corner, some of them came out looking like this!

I also signed up for a pasta class several months ago for an Artist’s Way task, and finally had the class this past weekend! My ravioli all came out different sizes and one of them definitely burst, but you guys. I made ravioli from scratch! Once I borrow my mom’s pasta machine, I will be unstoppable.

There are a few Cameron-isms I remember from off the top of my head, and one of them is: “The pressure to create great art stops us from making any art at all.” I’m really trying to move past that pressure, and remember that finished projects are better than perfect projects.

Taking Myself More Seriously

This skill might sound like the opposite of the previous one, but it’s really complementary. In order to have the time to play, you need to make time. Things like playing and doodling and writing morning pages and going on artist dates aren’t going to happen if you don’t plan to fit them into your day.

In general, I started taking myself more seriously as an artist this year. I’ve been working on my portfolio and my artist statement and my service offerings, applying to more opportunities, and writing to y’all in this newsletter.

In the conclusion of Cody’s book study, a bunch of us met over Zoom to talk about how our twelve weeks went. At the end of the meetup, Cody had us all type “I AM AN ARTIST” in the chat and hit send at the same time. It felt so special to call myself an artist in that moment, and to witness everyone else claiming that space and that title too.

Paying Attention to Synchronicity & Spirituality

The Artist’s Way is very spiritual, which I honestly wasn’t sure how I would feel about. I was raised Catholic and have since left the church, and I’ve become a little allergic to anything too…godly. But just like in a 12-step program, when you do The Artist’s Way you can call “god” by any name you want. I’m personally a fan of the phrase “the universe.”

Cameron tells you to expect moments of synchronicity along the way, and I didn’t experience any in the first few weeks. But when I started to let myself actually entertain the idea of developing my own spiritual practice again, some things just started clicking into place.

For example, when I was talking to some coworkers about how I was thinking of getting a sewing machine, one of them told me she had one she wanted to give away! After I spent an artist date watching a movie in which Michelle Williams takes care of an injured pigeon, I saw someone walking down the street carrying an injured pigeon. After the book study zoom, I drew a tarot card; the Three of Pentacles in my Modern Witch deck actually shows someone practicing their art and getting better at it.

Are these random occurrences signs from the universe? I don’t know—but it’s kind of nice to think that they are. (Also, I hope that pigeon fares as well as the one in Showing Up did.)

Special Announcements

• I’m writing a series of blog posts about my artist dates! A quick introduction is already up on my website if you want to hear more about The Artist’s Way 📝
• I have an article on making your D&D game more genderqueer heading to Sidequest (my favorite gaming mag) soon! 🧭

Things I Worked On This Month

• Prepping for NaNoWriMo, which I haven’t attempted in ages! This is part of my new “doing things imperfectly” practice 📚
• Laying out the re-release of late eclipses in the sun & moon and my new poetry zine the sweat & the cool, persevering through FontBook’s attempts to foil me 🌞
• Tending the Fallow Field, an email course for Sword & Kettle Press 🌾

Things I Loved This Month

• Good romance novels and good-bad romance novels, which might all be part of the NaNo prep 👀
• The Silence of the Lambs, which my partner convinced me to watch because it was made my the same director as Stop Making Sense. I am and have always been a scaredy cat so I’m shocked that I loved it?? 🐑
• the record by boygenius (still) (the show was amazing) 🦷
• Watching my partner play through Baldur’s Gate 3, and insisting that he casts Speak with Animals to speak to every single rat 🐀
• Autumn cleaning, the exciting follow-up to spring cleaning! (Julia Cameron notes that people doing The Artist’s Way often start getting rid of things that have been hanging around for too long 😬)

Thanks for joining me today! Next time, I’m going to share a closer look into one of my poems, plus some writing prompts.