It’s taking a global pandemic for me to tell the truth.

I’ve been so fortunate to tap into my creative side, finding fulfillment and healing. Like it was just waiting to be discovered. Buried treasure with big, excited eyes.

I started drawing and watercoloring 2 summers ago. I was a total beginner. The story I told myself was that I had to begin somewhere and no-one was watching me try and fail and try again. So what did I have to lose?

Creating art opened up in me hidden things: new feelings, discovering how I dealt with failure and success and how affirming it felt when people liked my work. So I kept drawing and kept painting.

Covid hasn’t hindered this pursuit. If anything, it has enlarged it. How, you might ask?

A friend told me about The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. Have you heard about this book? It’s been around for over 25 years and it’s a tool for helping blocked creative people become unblocked and develop their hidden creativity.

To me it’s felt like a creative river rafting party! with homework.

I got the book, journal and the workbook. In those I discovered the 2 Basic tools for the Artist’s Way:  The Morning pages and the Artist date.  The journal is for the morning pages – 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness writing done first thing in the morning, the brain drain. (Oh yes, I can hear you gasping with excitement) Then each week we take our creative self on an artist date to fill the tank with inspiration, whatever feels good to our inner artist. Such as a walk in the woods, a museum visit, or watching an old film.  My artist dates have been very simple.  Putting stickers in my workbook, watching U-tube videos on the color wheel and color theory and then painting my own color wheel. Reading a stack of children’s books.

The new story I started telling myself is that I’m wired to create. I’m able to do it and it’s wonderful to let my artist brain play like an uninhibited 4 year-old.

 I dug into every chapter, often reading them aloud to my husband in amazement because the insight was so “right on the spot.”

 Then one day I found a Facebook group for the Artist’s Way. Oh yes. I joined that. And then I found a podcast that offers short synopses on each of the 12 chapters. That was great.  And then I saw a post on the Facebook page from a woman offering an online 12-week group session going through each chapter of the book with coaching, group support and challenging exercises.

Yes please. Sign me up for that.

I’ve met with my Artist Way group twice now. Tonight’s meeting was so good, soaking up inspiration from my fellow artists. It felt good connecting with creative people from all over, and then came….the challenging exercise. We were each asked to list 5 creative identities that we had. Then pick the top 3 we wanted to work on. Then, of those 3, choose the one that was most important to us. I chose painting. Then choose the one that was the most challenging. I said writing.

Writing. The one I don’t feel comfortable doing. The one that causes me the most self doubt. The one that makes me declare many untrue stories.

Painting. I can do that all day and have all the good feelings, even when I mess up.

But writing. Oh, it weighs me down. So I told my group last night the story I was telling myself.

I said I have a blog – that I enjoy – but feel stuck in. That I haven’t had any ideas in a very long time and I feel like I don’t have anything to talk about. You know the story, I’m sure.

Well that coach of ours challenged me there and then to write a blog post and publish it  within the next 24 hours and share it with them.

I smiled and joked on the outside but inside I made a face and cringed.

I knew she was right, I needed to change the story I was telling myself. Could I? Did I care enough to want to?

Yes. I do have things to say.

I can express them in words and those words can reflect onto other creative pursuits.  Julia Cameron says in Chapter 2 of The Artists Way that “The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention” and “The reward for attention is always healing.”  I love that.

Words can transfer delight and help me wake up to noice all that I see in this big beautiful world God has given us.

So, reader, I have a take-away for you. If you have a creative dream and don’t know how to start or what to do, read The Artist Way. Tell me you’re reading it and I’d love to talk about it with you. So much.

And take-away #2 is for me. Liz, don’t ever tell your coach your REAL CREATIVE FEAR, the one you can’t fathom confessing aloud is …

 

 

dancing.