Wk 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety
By: Sophie Larsmon
Tags: Morning Pages, Julia Cameron, Artist Date, The Artists Way, Safety

Off we go…

A different type of dreaming: bedroom wall becomes a canvas for the imagination

Each chapter of The Artist’s Way starts with a succinct summary of what the week’s tasks are working towards. In this first week it is simply initiating our creative recovery. Cameron warns that ‘you may feel giddy and defiant, hopeful and skeptical. The readings, tasks and exercises aim at allowing you to establish a sense of safety, which will enable you to explore your creativity with less fear’.

You may feel giddy and defiant, hopeful and skeptical.

Well indeed. Tool numero uno of The Artist’s Way is Morning Pages. Off I go to the park, the sun in the sky, ready to be struck by some divine inspiration.

It took bloody ages. I foolishly chose to write them in my work notebook in which each page probably has the same surface area as a side of A4! And the good schoolgirl resurfaced in that I wrote in my neatest handwriting, despite having to stop at least twice during each sentence due to cramp. But I did it. It was my first attempt at stream of consciousness writing for a very long time. I’ve spent years helping numerous other artists and writers unlock their subconscious, but prizing it out of myself? Different story.

Morning Pages [n]: a verbal vomit, a way to unblock the gutter and allow free-flowing creativity to cascade throughout the day

Not that Morning Pages is actually directly about generating any sort of useful creative content. From what I understand, it’s more of a verbal vomit, a way to unblock the gutter and allow free-flowing creativity to cascade throughout the day. It, along with a weekly Artist’s Date and a range of weekly exercises, are at the core of The Artist’s Way.

Through the week’s exercises I have confronted head-on some of the major pressures that have been holding me back and weighing me down. These pressures have only spurred self-doubt, stress and quite frankly creative paralysis. So I’ve voiced them; given them a shape.

This new project can’t purely be seen as a means to test the market viability of our new product — OneThing — which may, or may not, allow Any One Thing to survive into 2021 and beyond. There might be some truth in this, but I can’t have it at the foreground of my mind. It’s disabling.

So, for now, I’ve put that thought aside; it’s currently not useful. I have also confronted a plethora of ‘blurts’ — rotten things that my subconscious blurts out. Cameron tells us that these blurts ‘flag our personal negative core beliefs and they’ve been created over the years often by other people’. These blurts actually hold the key to our freedom and are very important to our recovery.

It’s difficult and uncomfortable: there have been tears along the way. I’ve had to re-remember hurtful things people have said; re-feel the shame associated with failed projects.

Each blurt has to be confronted and dissolved by being turned into a positive affirmation. It’s difficult and uncomfortable: there have been tears along the way. I’ve had to re-remember hurtful things people have said; re-feel the shame associated with failed projects. It’s not about ignoring them; it’s about addressing them and removing their power, their hold. Turning them into positive affirmations is also really tricky, but I get the sense that the more I go over them, the easier they will be to believe. Over time, these affirmations will become weapons to help me achieve a sense of safety and hope.

Applying pressure to the future and holding onto ghosts of the past are crippling and completely unconducive to productivity, to dreaming, to letting one’s inner child play. As Cameron reminds us, ‘your artist is a child. Find and protect that child. Learning to let yourself create is like learning to walk’. As I watch my little boy begin to take his first cautious steps, I try taking some baby steps myself: I have dusted our bedroom from top to bottom and started to use the empty ‘Feature Wall’ as a dreaming space; I’ve danced for the first time in months, around my bedroom, on my own; I’ve sung in public (having been invited to by friends at their wedding party, but still — first public singing in 3 years; and I’ve been on the most amazing adventure designed to unleash my inner child by artist Laura White from Baltimore who I met on a remote Odyssey Works workshop (you’ll no doubt be hearing more about Odyssey Works over the coming weeks). This odyssey was the most amazing Artist’s Date I could have wished for. I was actively encouraged to see the world through young eyes through challenges and games.

A thoughtful Odyssey designed by artist Laura White to help me find my inner child

Doing our Artist Dates, we are receiving — opening ourselves to insight, inspiration, guidance.

Artist Dates is tool number 2, and are to be practiced weekly during the 12 week programme. Cameron herself admits that they ‘may strike you as a non-tool, a diversion’. But when executed alongside Morning Pages, they’re supposed to be incredibly useful. Cameron asks us to think of these two tools in terms of a radio receiver and transmitter. When doing our morning pages we are sending — notifying ourselves and the universe of our dreams, dissatisfactions, hopes. Doing our Artist Dates (a block of time, perhaps 2 hours per week especially set aside and committed to nurturing our creative consciousness), we are receiving — opening ourselves to insight, inspiration, guidance. We’re not supposed to take anyone else on our Artists Date, or nobody else except our inner artist, a.k.a. our creative child. I foresee this being tricky given that I’m working 5 days a week and have a child under 1, but I’ll give it a go.

I’m not completely unblocked. I think I managed to procrastinate today in research. If that’s possible. My head was down in books rather than dreaming or visualising. I’ll try to play more tomorrow.

But I can say that at the end of week 1, I did my morning pages 6 days out of 7 (I genuinely forgot to do it one day… it might have been the wedding prosecco from the night before clouding my memory…), I took myself off on a fabulous Artist’s Date, and I’ve done 6 out of the other 8 exercises for the week. It’s not perfect (nor is my Adobe artwork attempt), but it’s not bad going.

This week’s other discovery is that music helps. Dancing helps. Singing helps. This is what little Sophie did a lot of. Big Sophie can learn a lot from her :)

Several people got in touch last week telling me about their experience of The Artist’s Way. Please keep doing so; it’s inspirational hearing about others’ journeys. Leave a Response to this post or get in touch via IG or twitter @sophielarsmon