The Artist's Way

For as long as I've been alive, I've wanted to be a writer. My mom fondly recalls that as a toddler, long before I could write, I would scrawl long, doodley lines on paper and make her 'read' them to me. All through middle and high school, I wrote constantly. I wrote for pleasure, but more importantly, I wrote for compliments. Nothing frustrated me more than editing. Nothing disappointed me more than my teachers' criticism.

In freshman year at college, I was honored to be accepted into a poetry seminar for upperclassmen, taught by a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. I loved her writing. Unfortunately, she did not love mine back. When I requested a letter of recommendation for summer programs at our semester's end, she sighed and sat back in her chair.

"I don't think you're a poet. You should stop."

And so I did. For three years, all I could hear when I put pen to paper were those words. They paralyzed me. Never before had I so much as flirted with writer's block, but after that meeting my desire to write evaporated entirely. What was the point? One of the best writers in the world couldn't see the value in my work.

It was something I felt great shame about. I didn't tell anyone why I stopped writing. Finally, my senior year of college, I felt something had to change. I was reading for other classes and feeling a pull to respond to those stories. The words were coming back to me and I didn't know what to do with them.

On a whim, I enrolled in an introductory seminar where we read and analyzed great short stories. The course culminated with a single short story that we had to write. "I can do one story," I thought. "Certainly I have one story left in me."

I wrote it in one hazy night. It poured out of me, start to finish, like I was channeling instead of creating it. I felt drunk. I felt electric. I felt euphoric. It's the best story I've written so far. It won a school-wide prize and got published in the paper. If you're interested in reading it, you can find it here:

But what happened after that? My writing didn't recover overnight. The itch to write returned, but the words weren't coming out correctly. My fear that I only had that one story left in me continued. I wrote in dribs and drabs. I started and stalled on three books. I was so ashamed that I was wasting my talent, and so afraid that I had lost it entirely. I was chasing that electric hum and couldn't find it.

Recently, a dear friend asked me to accompany her on a mental journey. She's an astrophysicist and a talented sketch artist, and she wanted to explore her creativity through Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way." It's a pop-psych phenomena from the 90's that promises its devotees "a spiritual path to higher creativity" if they follow its 12 week program. I had my doubts, but was desperate to write well again. What's the worst that could happen, I thought.

Every morning, I brain dump for three pages in a journal. I don't reread those pages, and I don't let anyone else read them either. Once a week, I'm to go on an 'Artist Date' and listen to my inner creative child. I read the week's essay and do some guided journaling. This week, the first, we examined our memories for the source of our good and bad associations with creative efforts. We name and shame our censors, we celebrate and thank the people who encouraged us. You can guess which categories my professors fall into!

I feel reborn. The hum is back and it's louder than ever. I've written five short stories that I'm proud of. One of them was even selected as a top story last week! I've returned to one of my abandoned book projects and made progress. I find editing my own work to be easier - I feel less precious about each word I've written and more considerate of my reader. Who knows what changes the next 11 weeks will bring?

If you're interested in reading my Top Story from last week, here it is:

If you, like me, have been struggling with your writer's block, I encourage you to check out "The Artist's Way." Or, maybe just start each morning with three handwritten pages of whatever's on your mind. Maybe it will help you like it's helping me.