Tag Archives: julia cameron

Messy Art

Posted on by vgemmell

This year has been a bit of a messy and frustrating writing year. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve started a new project, then abandoned two different versions after the 11,000 words mark. The idea was there, but the characters weren’t coming alive enough (even with experimenting with two different main protagonists), so I’ve put that on the back burner for another time. I’m back to writing what I feel most familiar with now; a new Young Adult mystery, but this time it’s got a bit more of a supernatural slant. The words are flowing slow, but the plot and characters are now taking enough shape that I know I will see this first draft through to the end. Now that I’ve committed that goal to words on here, it has to happen!

Summertime never feels like a productive time to write. I don’t know if this is a Scottish guilt thing, but when it’s sunny and light outside an internal nagging voice tells me, ‘I should be outdoors enjoying myself, doing something active’, not hiding away indoors, staring at a screen, whiling away the hours with imaginary friends. Add on hay fever (with even the non-drowsy antihistamines making me drowsy!), sleepless hot nights during the mini-heatwave, a day job which at the moment is mentally exhausting me, and you can see the challenges I’m facing trying to keep the creative energy burning bright.

I decided to stop beating myself up about my slow progress, and instead turned my focus to ‘filling the well’ ~ a metaphor author Julia Cameron uses in her book ‘The Artist’s Way’ when talking about the importance of replenishing our creative energy. Funnily enough Julia Cameron wrote the foreward in the book I just finished working my way through, which is called ‘The Creative Cure’ by Jacob Nordby. This was gifted to me by my Mum, and I really enjoyed the exercises peppered throughout, designed to ‘heal the vital connection to your creative self.’ Every once in a while I like to read books like this, to remind myself being creative is a really important part of who I am, and I need to give more priority to this part of my life (in order to stay sane, and stay content!).

In the book Nordby talks about adopting ‘A Creative Practice’. The focus here is on the word Practice which equals Improving (not completing or reaching an end goal). (pg 122) A reminder to ‘Go on adventures, take risks, try new things… broaden your scope and connect with your hidden joy.’ He suggests little tasks to start, as well as posing questions such as what creative things and creative habits could bring more joy into your life?

I used to be really good at setting myself fun creative tasks, like blog themes, photography challenges, writing challenges, and so on. It made me realise how important it is to keep my creative brain active and equating writing and creating to joy, not pressure. One of the tasks in the book was to choose a photograph and write a poem about it. It’s been a long time since I’ve written poetry and I was nervous about producing garbage. This feeling was revealing in itself – that putting pressure on myself to create something perfect, is often stopping me from creating anything.

After the task he asked us to write how it made us feel. And for me it was a feeling of exhilaration of being able to express myself (I ended up writing quite a personal, poignant poem), and I felt relief and happiness; that I had actually managed to form words, and words that I actually quite liked. It was a small step towards making sure I give time to my creativity, even if just for a small portion each day, or week. And to also embrace the idea of producing not perfect art, but messy art. This also feels like a rebellion during times where AI is dominating creative conversations. I don’t want to create stilted, perfect sentences that have no soul. I want to create works that are rough around the edges, with human error.

When the new August issue of Writing Magazine arrived on my doorstop yesterday, (see in the photo at the top), I thought it was very timely that a theme running through this issue was to ‘Find the Joy in Writing’. I started reading it over a cup of tea this morning and loved Holly Ringland’s article, ‘Writing for Joy in five faces of fear’, with key reminders of how to re-kindle the joy of writing she had as a child, when free from the ‘fears’ that can block our progression. Her article ended with the motivation to keep going, ‘Our work as writers…(is)….to take the next tiny step on the page’.

Then a few pages later, Lynne Hackles ‘Novel Ideas’ column had the theme of not putting things off until tomorrow. ‘If you find yourself saying, ‘I’ll start that tomorrow’ you are simply putting off something you should start right now….’

A book I had looked out of my bookshelf this morning was ‘The Pocket Muse’ by Monica Wood, thinking this could be a good way of setting myself some new creative challenges. The first page I opened to, tied to both of the statements I pulled out above, so I’m going to end on this phrase, in the hope that if you are reading this post feeling a bit stuck, and unable to move on, that you can take this as a sign to at least start something today, no matter how small. For me, it was getting back on this blog, to write a much overdue post!

‘What are you waiting for? If not now, when?’ ~ (Monica Wood)

Finding Your Way

Posted on by vgemmell
Artwork by V Gemmell

Recently I’ve hit a bit of a creative slump so for my birthday a couple of months ago I asked for a copy of ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron. I’d always wondered about this book and my curiosity was piqued further when a recent article (in the May issue of The Writing Magazine) featured an interview with Julia Cameron, and she spoke about her recommended practice of writing ‘Morning Pages’, where you write down a stream of consciousness on three A4 pages every day before you do anything else. This is just one practice and task Cameron recommends in order to kick-start your creativity, or in my case, try to get ‘unstuck’. In the opening, Cameron describes the book as a ‘toolkit’ for artists, and, ‘as they (readers) learn to take small risks in their Morning Pages, they are led to larger risks. A step at a time, they emerge as artists.’ The book is divided into ‘weeks’ like you are undertaking a course, with new themes and tasks introduced each time, but what stays consistent is the suggestion to complete your Morning Pages daily, and once a week set time aside for ‘An Artist Date.’ This isn’t a suggestion that you hang around gallery openings asking for artist’s phone numbers. This date is with yourself, where you set proper time aside to engage in something creative, or at least an activity you enjoy, alone (the alone part is very important).

I’d like to say after delving into the book about 5 weeks ago that I have shown impeccable discipline, but I’ve not. I am averaging about three morning pages a week, and often this is typed into my notes pages on my phone as I travel by train into work. I get up at 6.45am the mornings I’m travelling into work and I’m not a morning person so I was loathe to set my alarm 20 minutes early (as it tends take about 20 minutes to pen three pages). For me, that was going to set me up to fail at the start, and would defeat the purpose of making this something I would hopefully enjoy, and something that would energise me.

So now my morning pages often turn into late afternoon or evening pages, and it’s probably missing the point of ‘clearing my head for the day’, but it has thrown up some very interesting musings and I often use my pages to reflect on why I’ve been feeling blocked. I have to say I am failing on the regular artist dates too but I have slowly started to set more time aside to enjoy and explore all sides of my creativity (not just writing) which is really important to me as it does really help me switch off from the distractions of daily ‘noise’. My pen drawing at the top of this post was a result of one such ‘date’, and I also finally read through a book I bought from the GOMA years ago, called ‘Art From Elsewhere’, which features 70 works by International Artists, selected by curator David Elliot. I particularly liked the photos ‘Girls in Cars’ by the artist Shirin Aliabadi – you can read a short article about her and her photography here.

Sometimes I feel I waste too much time scrolling through social media (don’t we all), but then I remember the fascinating accounts, such as Humans of New York, that I follow, and how there is so much inspiration to be found in ‘the every-day’. This is something I know; finding inspiration everywhere is a big message I thread through a lot of creative workshops I have delivered, but I seem to have forgotten of late. Noticing small things in life was mentioned in one of the chapters of Cameron’s book and I do think there have been so many ‘big’ unsettling things happening in the World of late, it’s easy to let that noise dominate. And it’s easy to tell ourselves we have so many important day to day responsibilities to carry out (which, let’s face it, exhaust us,) that we don’t have time to be creative and frivolous.

Recently I remembered someone from my past connecting with me on facebook years ago when my debut novel came out, who said to me, ‘Oh I see you wrote a book. I plan to do that one day but right now I’m far too busy.’ I felt like replying with the response I’m sure many writers would like to respond with, ‘Newsflash. We are all too busy, but if you really want to do it, you will make the time.’ Guess who I’m actually writing that message to now? Though as many writers know, having time is just one aspect of what holds us back. For me, being productive is very much about getting into the right mindset.

One of my favourite tasks so far in the book has been to write a letter from me at eighty to myself (with the prompts – what would I tell myself? what dreams would I encourage?). At first I struggled with this but then I quite liked eighty year-old me; she got quite sassy as the letter went on. It got quite personal, but I wanted to share part of it, because it’s probably something all of us need to hear sometimes:

Eighty-year-old me told me those times when I look at other writers/artists, whatever, and think I can never be that good, they’re so much better than me, they’re out there being so successful her response was, They’re not better than you. They’re braver than you. And if I look up when I’m eighty and all I see on my wall is some god damn modesty medal you won in your forties I am going to be very mad and hide it in a box of regrets. I want to look up from my armchair and see a wall covered in awards and certificates or at least some kind of photographic evidence that you have continued to put yourself out there, and celebrated your creativity and talents.

I hovered over that word ‘talents’ and nearly deleted it. But I didn’t. So I guess I’m half-way on my way.