☛ The main thing is to write for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night, dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. Take off from here. And don’t be so earnest. ☛ And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
I haven't read The War of Art yet but have had it highly recommended. (Amazon says The War of Art is nothing less that Sun-Tzu for the soul.) I have read The Artist's Way and even went to see Julia Cameron speak. My spiritual view of the world is a bit more pragmatic that Cameron's, and some of her "spirituality" isn't quite my cup of tea, but I'll say this for her book: When I began reading it, I wasn't drawing. By the time I was half way into it, I was. So, as one reader offering a purely anecdotal response – the s**t works. One thing is clear: You don't have to suffer alone. If you're facing resistance, realize that many others, great and otherwise, have faced the same. Its poison has even been known to stop a corporation. Just whatever you do, do something. ‣ Art is born in attention. ‣ The reward for attention is always healing. ‣ Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out. Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
‣ If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death. ‣ Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, you destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. ‣ Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance. Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles All quotes found at Goodreads.
I don't remember where I heard it, but someone once said, "No one ever says on their deathbed, 'I wish I'd spent more time at the office.'" Ever notice how in movies or television shows having to do with a particular job or industry it never shows the characters actually working. Because it's boring. Life generally doesn't happen at work. More often, it's happening somewhere else while you're at work. Unless its your life's work, your avocation, then that would be different. In the end, that's the thing we are living for––the thing that gives our lives meaning. Whether we are writers, artists, musicians, or actors et al, we are thinkers and conceptualizers first and foremost. You are only truly working when you're thinking about YOUR work. Your work is your experience and your gift to the world. Even if no one gets to experience your art, you thought it and it infuses your life and how you think.
There was a cartoon I saw once that had one's a drawing representing one's dreams and aspirations on one side and on the other us. Inbetween was the yawning pit of hell that represented the internet. Around the corner from my house there's a counseling center that offers help with cyberaddictions. Few of us can say they don't get distracted by the internet. For many of us it has our nemesis when it comes to a productive creative life. What can we do about it? Well, here's one idea:
If you need help, there are programs for that. Here's one––it's called SelfControl (logo at left), it's free, and it turns off your internet access to certain sites of your choice for a chosen period of time. SelfControl only limits access to certain sites but if that's not enough, if you need total black out, then there are other apps for that too. Distracted? I only with there was a SelfControl app for everything else in my life. Whatever, let's do something about it and get back to the important work.
I found that every single successful person I've ever spoken to had a turning point and the turning point was where they made a clear, specific, unequivocal decision that they were not going to live like this anymore. Some people make that decision at 15 and some people make it at 50 and most never make it at all. Brian Tracy
Words are there to try and make people prick up their ears, and agitate their hormones, and get them fretting or get a bit of electricity going. That’s not just the sound of the words, it comes from the meaning of course, the sea of meaning - or meanings.
OK. So, why can't I allow myself to draw? When you have an emotional reaction to what you see, you are judging. That is your signal that you have an issue inside of yourself - with yourself - not with the other person. If you react to evil, look inside yourself for the very thing that so agitates you, and you will find it. If it were not there, you will simply discern, act appropriately, and move on. Gary Zukav, page 157 from his book Soul to Soul The photo is one of Jill Greenberg's manipulations. She apparently gives her subjects a lolli and then takes it away before shooting.
… a universal human quirk: Sadness is more interesting than happiness, and thus more creatively productive. I always appreciate it when art violates my principles and still works.
A theory I've incubating for many years concerning emotional states on artmaking is that the best art comes from darker places: sadness, anger, regret, etc, are the most high octane of fuel. Obviously, a person who constantly holes themselves up in darkness may discover it has consequences for a happy life. In the big picture art could be for immortality, but happiness is for the mortal now, which is compelling. One should only undertake such things carefully. Still, taking control of our pain and using it to produce art can often be very empowering. I was talking to a well a known artist and writer of children's booksand she told me about an adult novel she was writing, a novel that was based on her own difficult childhood. Before she was going to begin her rewrites she traveled to India to stay at an ashram. When she returned to Los Angeles after a month, she no longer had the desire to finish the novel. The hunger and the angst were gone. When angels drive out the snakes and there's nothing to talk about? It's worth pondering.
An interviewer had once asked French author Jean Genet when did he begin writing. His answer: At birth. There is no such concept as "should" with regard to art... one very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don't know that they know... this applies to all creative thinking... once the breakthrough is made [in art, such as Cezanne's paintings or Joyce's stream of consciousness writing] there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But...there's always a reaction of a rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... the artist expands awareness, once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness. [It's not just about seeing things in a new way, it's about...] seeing things that are already there. Writers are very poor judges of their own work.* * All quotes from the video. What other endeavor in the world allows one to make such good use of their dustbin of experience as the artist and writer? And as far as experience goes, the worse the experience the richer the material, and, quite often for the author, the sharper the material. (I may be repeating myself here from other postsbut this is something I believe in religiously.) I have friends who sit on great stories for fear that they will expose themselves or the people in their lives they're writing about. Art, it can be said, requires some courage. Exposure and the burning of (some) bridges is part of the game. Otherwise, why not choose to be an acountant? In his interview below, Burroughs describes writers/artists as collectors of experience and the act of writing itself as a process of curation. He suggests writing down dreams if you can. He finds them to be a great source of material. He also says, rather chillingly, something that aspiring writers had better get used to: "Publication is, I think, very important to the writer." Withoutpublishing, he says, he would've likely given up writing altogether. (I suspect he would've come back to it. ) As a trust fund kid, he also had the great luxury of never having to devote his time to supporting himself. His travels also featured famously in his books.
The interviewer and Burroughs spend time bouncing from a number of topics beyond writing so you may want to skip through some spots. (The discussion on his views of death and the afterlife are interesting.)
