An artist's place is in the home
I'm reading this book that an earlier version of me (pre-writing block) would've happily mocked, The Artist's Way, circa 1992 advice for artists of all kinds to help her/him find a way back to creativity. It's corny in place and requires you to believe in God or some type of creator, contains daily affirmations and therapeutic suggestions and is basically moo-moo. However, I've been following along with it and writing every morning for the past 2 weeks. The main tenet is that you must get up a half hour early every day and write three pages, even if you have nothing to say, even if you don't want to, even if you've had too much to drink the night before, even if your boyfriend/girlfriend is yelling questions at you from the bedroom. You don't have to write fiction; you can write anything you want. I tend to put down the things I'm worried about or what I want to accomplish during the day. Nothing particularly enlightening or interesting, but the author makes a claim that if you keep writing about a particular thing, you're bound to come to some conclusions about it, or solutions, more so than if you just let the thoughts circle endlessly in your brain (I do that too). It's a 12 week program, each week with its own writing assignments and life assignments, like that you have to write down 20 things you enjoy doing and the approximate date of the last time you actually did those things. Then you're supposed to pick 2 off the list and do them at some point during the week. I had trouble even listing 20 things I enjoy, let alone the last time I did them. The other thing you're supposed to do every week is to have an artist's date with yourself; a two hour time period where you do something that fulfills the creative parts of you, like going to a museum or taking pictures or making a collage or whatever. I have a hard time keeping that date, unless knitting headbands for your friends at work while watching Law and Order counts as an artistic endeavor. Anyway, it's meant to bring self-awareness about how you're living your life and what things stand between you and your writing or painting or whatever artistic thing it is you want to do.
My old boyfriend in Chicago, Mark D., used to do morning pages and I think even took a class that used the book as the central text. He would do it. He would wake up every morning and write for half an hour. He would also run 10 miles a day and drink himself into oblivion on Absolut vodka on the rocks every night. I wasn't writing at the time at all, except for in my journal. He was working on a novel where the central character might have been named Stephen Dedalus (sp?) after the guy in Joyce's Ulysees. His guy was a taxi driver in Boston, a sensitive writer type who was trying to make enough money to buy his own taxi medallion (license to run his own taxi). I remember the first chapter the man was having a long, slow dream about drowning in his car. I thought the writing was good, though convoluted. I don't know why I never told him that I wrote too. Maybe I did and have forgotten.
Wish me continued success. I like filling up the pages; it's satisfying to come to the end of another hard backed lined notebook and see the black writing across all of the pages. I'm going to try not to worry about the fact that fiction is a distant memory right now.
My old boyfriend in Chicago, Mark D., used to do morning pages and I think even took a class that used the book as the central text. He would do it. He would wake up every morning and write for half an hour. He would also run 10 miles a day and drink himself into oblivion on Absolut vodka on the rocks every night. I wasn't writing at the time at all, except for in my journal. He was working on a novel where the central character might have been named Stephen Dedalus (sp?) after the guy in Joyce's Ulysees. His guy was a taxi driver in Boston, a sensitive writer type who was trying to make enough money to buy his own taxi medallion (license to run his own taxi). I remember the first chapter the man was having a long, slow dream about drowning in his car. I thought the writing was good, though convoluted. I don't know why I never told him that I wrote too. Maybe I did and have forgotten.
Wish me continued success. I like filling up the pages; it's satisfying to come to the end of another hard backed lined notebook and see the black writing across all of the pages. I'm going to try not to worry about the fact that fiction is a distant memory right now.