The Artist's Way: Intro

Welcome welcome!

Let’s get started

I’m very excited to be sharing this journey through the Artist’s Way with you. The first time I read the book a little over a year and a half ago, my life completely changed in just 6 months. I can’t wait to hear about how your creative process changes over the next 12 weeks. I’ll be sharing weekly as I work through the book, and do hope you use these posts as a place to share about your experience in the comments!

Looking Back

I started the Artist’s Way in July 2023, just after I had sold everything I owned, moved in with my sister in Spartanburg, SC for the Summer, and had taken a remote job so I could travel. I was still unsure of where I wanted to go, and where I wanted to live long-term, and I was feeling incredibly stuck creatively.

Morning journaling was already a practice for me, but it felt difficult to fill an entire page. I was already booking acting roles and working on scripts, but everything felt so incredibly difficult. Reading the introduction of the Artist’s Way in my sister’s spare bedroom that July morning, just after the 4th, it felt like a breath of fresh air. It was the first time I had read about others that seemed to be struggling with what I was struggling with, and the first time I didn’t feel crazy for being an artist. Page after page, I was reading about someone who had gone through what I was going through, and was describing the very things I struggled with. What’s more, they’d gone on to be successful!

It was the first glimmer of hope for me after 4 years of making seemingly no headway in any aspect of life.

“The Basic Tools”

The book lists a few basic tools that will be used throughout the 12 weeks. I struggled with some of them initially, while others were a bit easier to integrate.

Morning Pages

The morning pages have been by far, the most helpful for me. They’ve been a parkinglot for script ideas, worries, manifestations, and just general mental word soup that needs a pot to go in. I can’t always do morning pages if my schedule gets too crammed, but I don’t beat myself about missing a few days. As someone who is prone to rumination, and spends most of the day alone in their workspace with just their thoughts, I have found that taking a morning pages “vacation” for a few days once or twice a year is helpful!

I started on easy mode with a small journal and wide ruled paper, and with each new journal, would buy something a bit bigger, eventually also switching to college ruled (truthfully I hate wide ruled). Switching up journals was also really good motivation in the early months- racing to fill up the ones I hated pushed me to write a little extra and really strengthen my mental writing muscles.

I eventually found a journal that I LOVE and buy the same one every month. It’s hardcover to make writing in bed easier (she’s a cozy gal) and also more durable for toting around town, has a little pocket in the back for holding paper scraps, leaves, stamps, etc.

I display my journals proudly(!) above my cabinets, where they are safe from potential prying eyes, but still within sight to encourage me. Seeing how much I’ve written over the years never fails to motivate me when I’m in a bit of a slump.

Artist Dates

The artist dates are truthfully one of the things I struggle with most. When first faced with doing them, I realized I didn’t actually know what kinds of things I liked to do. I grew up in a household where money was always tight and there was rarely any extra money for “frivilous” extra-curricular activities. Having 5 siblings also meant that you usually had a tag-along with any activity, so when faced with doing something for the sake of doing it, and alone, as an adult, it was actually quite difficult. I discovered that most of the things I do are done out of a feelinng of obligation or necessity, and I somethimes keep myself from doing things because I’ve “never had an interest in the before.”

Growing up, there were adults in my life that could not process that a child would want to be something other than what they wanted them to be, and was part of a community that was very judgemental and dogmatic in what was considered “acceptable” for a person to be. I was raised in a christian, end-times revivalist community, where the predominate messaging was that the world is ending, and you best be perfect. As a child, this taught me that I was probably going to end before I reached adulthood, so what was the point of exploring my interests, and as a young girl it taught me I better figure out how to be a good woman because judgement day is coming, and everyone knows that Eve was the one that sinned first, so any choice a woman makes is sinful, more sinful than any choice a man makes. All this meaning in turn that anything I want is sinful, anything I do is sinful. I often would abandon or conceal interests growing up because of this, and used hyper-faxation on academics and “safe activities” to cope. I graduagted at highscool at 15 because I took classes through the summer, and quickly progressed in ballet at the christian dance academy. I said I wanted to be a fashion designer and would spend long hours making the dresses I had sketched out, unaware that I actully was more interested in the stories and characters the designs were for.

Obviously all of this is very complex trauma, riddled with grey area and compounded by today’s current events and the inpending environmental catastrophe of climate change. To boil it down to very simple problems that the dates in the Artist’s Way adresses though, this type of upbringing and environment showed me that a) it was not safe to invest in new experiences and b) it was not safe to experiment as a person. As an adult, I can now recognize that this was not okay, and where my intense fear of change and being judged most likely stems from.

The first time I read the book, I really struggled to find things I wanted to do for the dates. I was living in the middle of nowhere for the summer, which made finding things to do a bit more difficult as well. I ended up taking weekend trips to Charleston for a few of them, or would treck to a coffee shop 30 minutes away just to be able to say I did something.

The weekend trips ended up being quite impactful for me. The three-day trips in Charleston were where I allowed myself to order a whole pizza for just me (my ED from youth would’ve never allow this!), go to Urban Outfitters and buy impractical low-rise bungee waist shorts because I liked them, make friends with girls at a french bar and realize mid-way through the night that they were actually hitting on me, and discover that oh! I like my hair in braided pigtails.

This second time around, I do find that I still struggle with the dates a bit. My schedule is currently jam-packed, so carving out “me time” on top of morning pages and social activities feels a bit tricky but I’ve found some pockets of time regardless.

Dates I’ve taken myself on so far:

• Ran (literally) across town to Sephora and let myself buy three things

• Went to Anthropolgie and bought an olive oil drizzler (not something i would’ve ever thought to buy)

• Signed up for a weekend ceramics class

Two of my dates have been centered around buying things, and I’m okay with that, while being mindful of rampant, harmful consumerism. Financial scarcity is a trauma I am still working through, so buying things and trusting it will not plunge my life into financial ruin is a big win for me. As a kid, needing new shoes was quite stressful - $20 would make or break the family budget- and my parents were always worried about a surprise bill. At times, there were no groceries in the fridge. Well into my 20’s, I’m still convinced an $18 olive oil drizzler will be the catastrophe that causes me to declare bankruptcy, which is honestly very funny to me when I think about it.

It was actually Artist dates that made me realize how deep this wounding was. I found myself fretting over a .50 cent thimble I had found at an antique mall that I really liked. I realized I was worried about spending .50 cents. Just .50 cents! Since then I began finding small ways to increase my financial confidence, like buying one extra thing at the grocery store (an extra can of beans) or a maybe thrifiting a pair of candlesticks (yes, Mylea, we do have 12 extra dollars, and I want these candlesticks).

Weekly Assignments

At the end of the chapters there’s a list of weekly assignments, some of which I found incredibly exciting, others I had a real aversion to. Doing some of them a second time around, it’s been interesting to see which I feel drawn to, and how my answers have changed for some of them.

More, more, more!

Thanks for reading! Truthfully, this was a difficut post to write. It was due a week ago, but when I started writing it I felt as though I had hit a brick wall. It took me a few days to come back around to being excited to share it! If you’ve read the Artist’s Way or are starting it, I’d love to hear in the comments about your experience!

-m