For those of you who have already heard me wax lyrical about Julia Cameron and her book, "The Artist's Way," you will know for yourself the usefulness of the two tools I'm about to talk about. For those of you who haven't read the book, used to be creative and wonder now when you lost your way - this book is for you. If there are only two things you need to take away from this book to build into your daily routine so that your creativitiy is jump-started its these:
Numero Uno, Morning pages: Set your alarm for half an hour earlier in the morning, get up and write three pages of stream of consciousness stuff into a journal before the busyness of your day and your mind take completely over your sanity. The point is to put the things on your heart, mind and soul onto pages. IF you feel there is nothing to say, put down three pages of nothing. Think of it as a way of massaging the knot out of a tough, harderned muscle. I do. It works. According to Julia, you'll see amazing results within weeks. I only noticed after a year - but I'm like that.
And Two, The Artist's Date: Once a week, take your lovely self on a date. With yourself. No one else you know allowed. This could be as large as a weekend visit to a new place or as small as an hour of coffee while reading your favourite paper in a new cafe you've always walked past and wondered about but never wandered into. Cameron actually gives an example of buying gold stickers and putting them in scrap books or other places of interest. This is harder for me to do. I find it easy to hang out in places that I know like my fave coffee hang-outs or discover new ones. No problem. But if you're like me, you will find your weekends taken up with household chores and social time. Throw in the huge amout of quiet downtime I need in my life personally to read, write and remain sane and there is very little room to be creative for myself EVERY week. Golden stickers on a scrapbook stress me out, don't even seem worth the investment of time compared to what you want to achieve with an Artist's Date (focus people): Enhanced Creativity. But my oh my, is it worth it! As with everything, its all about practice and giving yourself time to get into being on a date with yourself. I'm still learning but my last one was walking around in Gamla Stan, Stockholm.
Numero Uno, Morning pages: Set your alarm for half an hour earlier in the morning, get up and write three pages of stream of consciousness stuff into a journal before the busyness of your day and your mind take completely over your sanity. The point is to put the things on your heart, mind and soul onto pages. IF you feel there is nothing to say, put down three pages of nothing. Think of it as a way of massaging the knot out of a tough, harderned muscle. I do. It works. According to Julia, you'll see amazing results within weeks. I only noticed after a year - but I'm like that.
And Two, The Artist's Date: Once a week, take your lovely self on a date. With yourself. No one else you know allowed. This could be as large as a weekend visit to a new place or as small as an hour of coffee while reading your favourite paper in a new cafe you've always walked past and wondered about but never wandered into. Cameron actually gives an example of buying gold stickers and putting them in scrap books or other places of interest. This is harder for me to do. I find it easy to hang out in places that I know like my fave coffee hang-outs or discover new ones. No problem. But if you're like me, you will find your weekends taken up with household chores and social time. Throw in the huge amout of quiet downtime I need in my life personally to read, write and remain sane and there is very little room to be creative for myself EVERY week. Golden stickers on a scrapbook stress me out, don't even seem worth the investment of time compared to what you want to achieve with an Artist's Date (focus people): Enhanced Creativity. But my oh my, is it worth it! As with everything, its all about practice and giving yourself time to get into being on a date with yourself. I'm still learning but my last one was walking around in Gamla Stan, Stockholm.
2 comments:
Just finished The Artist's Way this week - it's been so great. I think I'll have to keep dipping back into it because there's just so much good stuff inside.
Oh you must get the Workbook if you can. Its just a great way of storing all the thoughts that the book inspired on your journey along the way. I'm keeping it to read over every year and benchmark myself.
Did I just write 'bench-mark'? Yikes!
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