Thoughts Happen

Artist Dates with Dinosaurs

I am now four and a half weeks in to The Artist’s Way program by Julia Cameron, and this is what I have learned so far: I have a really hard time letting myself play without feeling guilty about it. The two main pillars of the program are the daily Morning Pages and Artist Dates, one of which is easy and one of which is hard. 

Morning Pages are easy. You get up and write three pages longhand first thing in the morning of whatever comes to your mind. I enjoy writing longhand anyway, and it is a relief to be able to spill whatever drivel comes to my head directly onto the page without judging it or wondering if it is publishable. I also find that I make connections between things while writing that I tend not to make if I am just thinking, which is fascinating.  

The Artist Dates, however, are a little harder for me. This is where you take your inner artist out on a date. You ask your Artist child (gag) where she wants to go or what she wants to do and then you go do something that you really want. It doesn’t have to be particularly arty, Cameron says. Your artist might want to go bowling, for instance.  

As a stay-at-home mom only just recently building my freelance work into something I call a business, I already feel a tad guilty about the flexibility I have with my time — not that I didn’t pay my dues during Daughter’s nursing, diapers and potty training years. But I take too much to heart the phrase, “guilty pleasure,” and figure that anything I take time off to do that’s pleasurable must also come with a bag of guilt, which I dutifully drag around with me. 

So the thought of taking off up to two hours, two hours, every week to do something that feeds the creative spirit of the eight-year-old little kid inside who wanted to be an inventor when she grew up is a little hard to swallow. But, if I am going to do The Artist’s Way wholeheartedly, this is what I must do. So here’s what I’ve done on my Artist dates so far. 

Week 1: I went to Lux Art Institute and caught the docent’s talk on the artist David Humphrey whose work was on exhibit. I’ve always told myself that I am not a visual art person. I have only a passing knowledge of art history, and never displayed much talent in the mechanics of making art either. People who were interested in art were creative and free-spirited, flighty even, and Not Like Me. I could therefore dismiss the entire field of pursuit.  

However over the past five years I’ve discovered a hunger for exposure to visual art that I never noticed before. I know I’ll get overwhelmed if I try to Educate Myself on art, so I take it in tiny doses and pay attention to how it makes me feel. “Do I like this?” I ask. I’ve been careful to follow only where I feel a true interest. I did not feel particularly moved by Humprey’s work, or even like it very much, but was glad I went. I also bought a quirky little metal dinosaur in the gift shop and some notecards. I love notecards.  

Before I left I sat in a sunny spot looking over the hillside and sketched a little scene in ballpoint pen in my trusty Moleskine notebook. I’ve never felt I had much talent for drawing, but discover that this also is something I want to do, just for fun.  

Week 2: I didn’t want to do anything that was quite so, well, arty this week. So on the spur of the moment on a Tuesday morning I decided to watch a movie in the middle of the day. Yes, really living the high life. I borrowed my dad’s DVD of La Vie En Rose, about French singer Edith Piaf, about a year ago and never watched it. My husband wasn’t too keen on seeing it so I’d figured I’d just wait until a time when I felt like sitting down and watching a movie. Well you see how long it took me. 

I closed the curtains, made popcorn and had just enough time to finish the story of France’s “Little Sparrow” before heading out to pick up Daughter from school. I felt remarkably decadent.  

Week 3: Perhaps it was last week’s subtitled movie, or the French Pastry Shop near the CVS where the server has been letting me indulge my college French that triggered it, but I remembered that several years ago I noticed a weekly French Conversation group on the calendar at the library. I’d thought, “That’s something I’d like to do someday.” But of course, someday meant much, much later. Perhaps when I am an empty nester or have lots of free time. And of course, my French would have to be a lot better before I felt comfortable showing up.  

Well guess what? I decided that someday is now. I checked the schedule and they were still meeting on Tuesday afternoons right before school gets out. Perfect. I found the meeting room with a whiteboard that announced, “Bienvenue! Nous parlons Francais ici!” I took my place among perhaps a dozen women and men at the table (I was by far the youngest), and thoroughly enjoyed an hour of catching as many snippets of conversation as I could and contributing en peu as well. I’ll definitely go back.  

Week 4: This week was tough, due to a condensed schedule. With not enough time to go to French, and at a loss as to what my Artist Date would be, a circular rack of books caught my eye at the contract Post Office-cum-pharmacy-cum-giftstore where I was in line to mail a package. Next to the paperback classics was a rack of Dover Coloring Books. I used to love Dover Coloring Books. My parents bought them for me and I spent hours coloring in Native American Designs or Revolutionary War Uniforms.  

The one that caught my eye was Dinosaurs of the Triassic Era. “I used to like to color,” I said to myself. “And I used to like dinosaurs.” (Still do, I guess). I flipped the book over. $3.99. I am so buying this. Once at home I dug out the colored pencils my grandmother gave to me (who was a self-taught artist and painter in her retirement years, interestingly), and spent 15 blissful minutes meticulously coloring an Archosaur red with orange spots.  

So it’s been interesting, and the more I take the Artist Dates the less guilty I feel about it as I see the results of the program in my creative life. I highly recommend them for your inner 8-year-old. 

Stuart Smalley and Bellatrix Lestrange arm-wrestle for my creative soul

If you’re a fan on Facebook or follow me on Twitter you might know by now that I received a copy of The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, for Christmas and am diving into its 12-week program, subtitled “A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.” I’d heard of the book before, but never really thought it was for me until Neil White highly recommended in his half-day workshop at the Oxford Creative Nonfiction Conference I attended in October. 

The first week of The Artist’s Way focuses on recovering a sense of safety in our creative lives, using affirmations as a tool. Oh, Brother, I thought. She’s probably going to  have me recite some stupid New-Age slogan about what a worthy person I am, like Stuart Smalley: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” 

Fortunately Cameron fully acknowledges that affirmations sound hokey and stupid when you start using them.

“... saying nice things about ourselves is notoriously hard to do. It feels pretty awful at first. Try these and see if they don’t sound hopelessly syrupy: ‘I deserve love.’ ‘I deserve a rewarding creative life.’ ‘I am a brilliant and successful artist.’ ‘I have rich creative talents.’”

Gag.

In the next exercise she asks me to pick an affirmation, for example, “I am a brilliant and prolific writer,”  and write it ten times in a row, paying attention to what my inner Censor says while I’m writing it. My inner Censor is someone I visualize as Bellatrix Lestrange — the Helena Bonham Carter version — with a sharp tongue and wicked sneer, who takes every chance to cut me down to size with a “Who do you think you are?” put-down.  

But this affirmation doesn’t trigger Bella too much. I mean, brilliant? Whatever. I’m not going for brilliant, so she can’t touch me there. And prolific? Well, I have about 50 published clips to my name over the past dozen years, not to mention over a hundred blog posts, so prolific isn’t that much of a stretch for me to believe. 

But what if I try a different tack? “I am a talented and creative artist.” Ooooh — Bella pricks up her ears at that one.  

“You? An artist? That’s rich! You haven’t had an art class since you were in junior high! Your degrees are in engineering, for Chrissakes. You never went to J-school, don’t want to get an MFA, and you don’t even like making things up! You hide behind nonfiction because you have no imagination. You’re a plodder and a hack. You’ll get paid, but nobody would ever believe you’re an artist.”  

Ouch.  

This is probably why I never thought a book called The Artist’s Way was for me. I don’t have a problem calling myself a writer. I mean, I write, and sometimes people actually pay me to do so. Ergo I’m a writer. But I’ve never thought of myself as an artist. A craftsperson, perhaps. A wordsmith, maybe. But an artist? That will be a stretch. But the whole purpose of this program is, as Neil White put it, to force you to find out what is making you unhappy in your creative life. So I don’t suppose it’s meant to be comfortable. And if the first step to higher creativity is to tell myself that I am an artist ten times a day, I guess I’d better get going. 

 

I am a talented and creative artist. (gag)

I am a talented and creative artist. (do I really have to?)

I am a talented and creative artist. (squirm)

I am a talented and creative artist. (yeah, whatever)

I am a talented and creative artist. (oh, god)

I am a talented and creative artist. (okay, okay)

 

To be continued ...

 

Part of This Writer's Life, an occasional series on my life as a writer.

All book links are to independent bookstores. This week, Warwick's online store. Not an affiliate. 

Faulkner's Brother and the Pregnant Pixie

She approaches the podium gracefully, embraced in a moss-green dress of crushed velvet, despite a protruding belly throwing her center of gravity forward. Wavy red hair that seemingly exudes its own light source falls past her shoulders, framing delicate, milky-white features. A red-headed Tinkerbell with a bun in the oven.  

I am in Oxford, Mississippi, stomping grounds of Faulkner and Michael Oher (“The Blind Side”) and home to the University of Mississippi, a.k.a. Ole Miss, at my first writers conference ever, perched in my seat in the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics on a crisp Friday evening, ready for the Conference opener entitled, “Curiosity as a Narrative Force in Creative Nonfiction.” The pixie is Beth Ann Fennelly, an Associate Professor at the University, published author of poetry and nonfiction, and tonight’s speaker at the Oxford Creative Nonfiction Writers Conference. 

“A writer should be as serious as a child at play,” she quotes from Nietzsche. “When we stumble over the truth,” she tells us, “as writers our role is to circle back and ask, ‘Why?’” and to use curiosity as the driving force to create a narrative that gives life meaning. 

Anxiety is fear or uneasiness without a source, she tells us, but a writer’s job is to find the source, and as a short exercise asks us to write a list of things that illicit bizarre emotions in us, the kind that are way out of proportion to how a normal person would react.  

At the top of my list is turtles.  

On Mother’s Day three and a half years ago, my daughter and I walked the half block home from the big house at the end of our cul-de-sac with Littlefoot, a fist-sized box turtle who had outlasted his college-bound first owner. An expressionless reptile that spends half the year underground in his backyard enclosure and most of the rest of the year lurking under a palm trimming, he and his turtle brethren have for some reason loomed large in my subconscious ever since. 

 I have recurring dreams about turtles multiplying and coming out of the ground, turtles having baby turtles no bigger than a quarter and overrunning the enclosure. 

Why the hell why? 

Fennelly next tells us to use the items on our list as cues for what to write about — the things that itch in the back of our minds that we didn’t even really know we were thinking about. “Why am I troubled about this?” she advises us to ask, and to keep refining the question until it moves from the personal to the sociological to the universal.  

But I can’t think why anyone else would care that I dream about turtles.

Afterwards we amble en masse over to a reception at Memory House, the former home of William Faulkner’s brother, John. A pre-reception directive from the conference co-director for us to mingle with everyone, combined with the open bar, emboldens me to introduce myself to any presenters I see. I am hoping I run into Fennelly when I nearly do, literally, as she is heading from the reception room to the back porch and I the reverse. 

“I really loved your talk,” I blurt spontaneously.  

“Why, thank you,” is the gracious response, lilting in the ever-present Mississippi cadence I will be immersed in the entire four days.

While I have her in front of me I must ask. “You said we should write about things that trouble us, and what I put on my list is my unexplainable recurring dreams about turtles. But I don’t know that anyone else would find that interesting.”  

Without missing a beat, she tells me, “You’ve got to have the confidence as a writer that you can make it interesting.” And suddenly I am buoyed. And I remember the New Yorker piece I read for my workshop earlier in the day by John McPhee about a long-haul trucker, how the narrative pulled me, fascinated, through a 14-page piece on a subject I would never have normally read. And I have hope, and a mission. 

It’s my job to make people interested in my turtle dreams. 

 

This is the first in a periodic series about my life as a writer. I have so far avoided posting much about my writing life, for two reasons: I don't want Thoughts Happen to appeal only to writers, and I thought it might be a bit self-indulgent. But the act of writing is such a big part of my life that I was starting to feel self-conscious about not including it on the site. All posts will fall under the category This Writer's Life, as a blog-within-a-blog on Thoughts Happen. 

 

Finding My Birth Family

My pulse quickens as I turn the pages of my book, one of several I brought along for a laid-back week in Santa Barbara. It’s not a mystery novel, crime thriller or the latest bloodsucking romance, yet it grabs my imagination like no other.

When we arrived at the vacation rental I promptly staked out the corner of the cream-colored, L-shaped sectional as my spot for reading, and I’m currently sitting with my legs stretched out, draped in a sage green throw on the short leg of the L in the sunny living room with the object of my fascination. The title? “The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 1.”

 I bought it eight months earlier on vacation in New York at a huge Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side. Standing in front of an entire section titled, “Essays and Nonfiction,” I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, and snatched up this anthology along with Annie Dillard’s “The Writing Life,” and Joan Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” both of which I’ve since read.

This decidedly un-sexily titled book fills me with tingles of excitement with each new essay. That there’s a Thing called Creative Nonfiction, and that people do this makes my creative fibers vibrate like crazy, the way a string vibrates when it’s exposed to the right frequency. I get this.

Creative nonfiction is succinctly described as, “True stories, well told.” “I could do this,” I think. In some ways, I’ve been doing it all my life, I just didn’t know what it was called — I didn’t know there was a Thing, I thought it was just the stuff I liked.

It’s like finding you were adopted and have relatives you never knew about, who share your deviated septum, sandpaper-dry sense of humor and tendency to chew an equal number of times on both sides of your mouth.

That’s how I feel reading “The Best Creative Nonfiction” — as if I’ve found a clan of relatives I never knew I had, my literary birth family who share my creative DNA. Every essay in the collection, edited by the founder of a journal also called Creative Nonfiction, prompts giddy pangs of recognition.

This explains my fascination with memoirs, documentaries and the black-and-white photography of Edward Weston and Robert Frank.

This is why as a kid I read biography after biography and wanted to be Harriet the Spy when I was 10 years old. I didn’t want to break my classmate’s little finger or cut a rival’s hair — I wanted to sneak around with a pen and notebook, spying on my neighbors and writing about them in a secret journal, wondering what their lives were like during the other 23-and-a-half hours of the day.

I’ve found My People, and I didn’t even know I was looking for them.

Harry Potter and the Bleary-eyed Writer

Care to guess what magical object from the world of Harry Potter I most wish was more than a figment of J. K. Rowling’s imagination about now? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the Invisibility Cloak, flying Quidditch broom or Sneakoscope.

Here’s another hint: I was particularly wishing I had one after the third night this week of waking up with a start at oh-dark-thirty in the morning with a stream of tumbling thoughts and ideas that kept me from falling asleep again for god knows how many hours.

 Give up? It’s the Pensieve, that magical apparatus that lets you siphon thoughts and memories out of your mind into a vial to store until just the right time to retrieve them again. To remember the stored thoughts you pour the vial’s contents into the Pensieve bowl and plunge your face in until it all comes back to you.

I’ve experienced multi-day middle-of-the-night creative episodes once or twice a year for the past several years now, so I know the pattern is that they eventually burn out and my life goes back to pretty much normal again, with the addition of several kick-ass new ideas and renewed inspiration for following them. In fact it was about two years ago that the concept of the Thoughts Happen blog came to me that way, right down to the color scheme and basic graphic elements, unusual for me as I am normally quite graphically challenged.

So I’m not knocking the creative energy, but what is it about the middle of the night that opens the floodgates? Could I maybe program myself to be that creative while, say, folding laundry instead? Because it sure wreaks havoc on my waking hours. But if I had a Pensieve I could keep on my nightstand, I could just siphon off all those exciting but sleep-depriving thoughts until the morning and wake up refreshed.

Wouldn’t it be awesome for meditation, too? Sit down to meditate only to immediately take off down some rabbit hole of the mind? Simply touch a wand to your temple and whoosh, off those troublesome thoughts go until later. I suppose that would be cheating, though. And the way some of my sittings go, I wouldn’t need siphoning so much as a drainage ditch.

But in the muggle world we’ve got to learn to do it the hard way — dealing with our thoughts as they come up one by one, hopefully attaining some clarity along the way and not taking any of them too seriously.

And I suppose going to bed a little earlier wouldn’t hurt either.

Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/robotbrainz/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0