The Artist's Way - Write Your Feelings (continued)

Slowly, the constant mind chatter stops. The inner critic becomes quiet and we can begin to listen to the inner voice, the voice of intuition, the source that knows it all. The other voices we have heard our whole life become quieter - our father telling us we were never good enough, our mother telling us our dreams are childish, our teacher saying we aren’t bright enough and society telling us to be more practical. Once the commitment to the process has been made, the discipline becomes a pathway to release creativity and expand consciousness.

Even if this moment we are lucky enough to be doing something that makes us feel alive and creative, nothing stays the same forever. Eventually we get to a point where the old stuff just does not do it anymore. This is the critical juncture. We know we are blocked creatively because we make excuses -- “It’s too late for me.” - “When I make enough money I’ll do what I like.” - “It’s just my ego talking.” - “My family and friends will think I’m crazy.” - “Creativity is a luxury, I should be happy with what I’ve got.”. If we are telling ourselves any of these things, we can be sure we are not being all that we can be.

In The Artist’s Way, Cameron talks about a real yet amazing way to get in touch with our creativity. She calls this discipline “the morning pages” and considers it the most basic of all the tools in the creative recovery and discovery process. She says that in order to retrieve your creativity, first you must find it.

The morning pages are three pages of longhand stream of consciousness. They are non-negotiable. Just like the artist who paints every day, we show up every morning and write. There is no wrong way to do the morning pages. These pages are not meant to be art or poetry. They have nothing to do with thinking, grammar or punctuation. Sometimes something wonderful comes out of them and sometimes not. Sometimes they are silly, self-pitying, and sometimes angry -- it does not matter because no one is going to read them, not even us for the first eight weeks.

What is most important is that all that angry, whining petty stuff that is finding its way to the morning pages is what stands between our creativity and us. That’s the stuff that is swirling around in our minds, the internal censor making comments -- “You can’t even spell.” “You call that writing.” We need to remember there is no right or wrong way to write the morning pages -- our censor’s opinion doesn’t count. (to be continued)