Ojalá, Selah, Lateda

Starting the Artist’s Way

The Artist’s Way Collective begins today.   I feel like I started 2 weeks ago when I read the intro chapters and went ahead and got started with the morning pages.  I did not manage to write them first thing every morning but I did write 3 pages a day. So far I am loving the process.  I have kept a journal off and on since I was in junior high.  Growing up I thought that if I was going to be a famous artist someday I needed to keep  track of my correspondence and write in journals for the sake of my future biographers. Needless to say there is a quite a lot of posturing and self-consciousness in a lot of what I wrote. Then about 5 years ago when I started my sporadic attempts at blogging I found that even when I wasn’t planning writing for possible inclusion in a web log I was still often using a certain tone and structure that lent itself to being read by someone else. Cameron’s permission to let the morning pages be whatever they are has been so freeing to me. I have not tried to sound deep, or thoughtful or mature, I have just let myself literally write whatever has come to mind, and that has include things nonsense like, “there are only 3 more lines on this page and if I write about their existence I will fill up 2 and then I can write about them.” And I love that that’s ok. I am however still very self-conscious about this, the blogging, part of the process. When I writing pretty regularly at Xanga I only had 3 people who regularly read what I was writing and 2 of them were very close friends. Then when I made my attempt with MySpace, again a very small number of viewers all of whom I knew. Now participating in Illustration Friday and The Artists Way Collective the possibility of actually communicating with a wider range of people has opened up. I must admit I am a little terrified but rather exhilarated too.  I really do want to push myself past being an “artsy person” and into being an artist. I want to be able to make affirmations that include the word “prolific” without wincing. And if pushing myself as far out of my comfort zone as I can bear and then typing about it will get me there, well, I’m still in.

From Chapter 1:

“Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist.”

“In order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.”

“Most of the time when we are blocked in an area of our life it is because we feel safer that way.”