Dear friends,
Welcome to our first weekly check-in.
We have made it through our first week of The Artist’s Way! Many struggles have been encountered along the way — staggeringly long train delays, crazy work schedules, the general busyness of life in our twenties — but we have arrived, and we are so very excited to share this first official episode of our podcast journeying through Julia Cameron’s guide to reigniting our innate creativity.
In the first chapter of The Artist’s Way, we recover a sense of safety.
In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron encourages three practices: daily morning pages, a weekly artist’s date, and a weekly check-in to evaluate your progress. While you can absolutely conduct your weekly check-in with just yourself, we’re holding our check-ins together — to keep ourselves accountable, to encourage each other, and frankly, because we think it’ll be quite fun!
We hope you’ll enjoy following along with us, regardless of whether or not now is the right time for you to journey through The Artist’s Way — and if you have decided to pick up Julia Cameron’s book, we can’t wait to hear how your first week has gone!
This is what our week has looked like.
Elena’s morning pages update, week one:
My experience with the morning pages this week has been — shall we say —mixed. I have (previously) prided myself on my long-running morning pages tradition, which I started perhaps six or seven years ago, before Julia Cameron was ever on my radar. I found journaling by hand tedious; I wanted to let my thoughts race across a page and keep my fingers moving across the keyboard, no matter what. So, I started keeping a Word document for every month of the year. Nearly every day, I would open up the document, note the date and the place I was, and start pouring out whatever was in my brain onto the page. Key words here: nearly every day.
I didn’t think the jump from nearly every day to every day would feel so difficult! I was surprised by how much I felt like I was slogging through the pages, and I missed a day entirely — and morning pages became more like afternoon or evening pages. So! My resolution this week is to do my morning pages (1) daily, and (2) in the actual mornings. More on that in the episode!
Additionally, I unfortunately made a fairly abysmal effort at actually completing Julia’s exercises in the first chapter. I did have the wildly embarrassing experience of completing one of her assignments — to write “I am a brilliant and prolific [insert type of creative you are]” ten times, which prompted “blurts” that I am attempting to replace with “affirmations.” There is nothing like having to say something exceptionally positive about yourself to remind your brain of all the things about which you are insecure!
Joy’s morning pages update, week one:
I’m afraid my morning pages report this week is rather grim. I was down South for teaching in London, and between various train delays (more on that in the podcast!) resulting in very late nights, I got out of routine. In general, I find it hard to keep up healthy habits when traveling, which is something I’m going to think about more deeply this week as the upcoming semester involves a fair amount of back and forth between Scotland and England, and I want to find ways to do that that are sustainable. All this to say, I’m afraid I only managed two morning pages this week.
Mea culpa, Julia, Elena, et al!
On the happier side, I’ve done two things to motivate myself to do morning pages: I have a new cute little notebook and I got myself a fountain pen! It is funny the little things that keep you motivated, isn’t it? The longer I go in the discipline of writing, the more I believe that I am not above Pavlovian motivations to stay in good habits. If I associate writing with things I like (yummy tea, pretty notebook, pleasing pen), I do them. Simple as! I saw Emma (one of the readers on my Substack) talk about a website that sends you little badges for doing your daily exercises. Whatever it takes!
What has been fruitful for me in this week’s chapter has been thinking about my “monsters” and “champions” of my artistic self. I feel mildly bad writing about the monsters because, for the most part, I actually don’t bear them any ill will, but it was helpful to identify where I picked up negative messages about my capacities, or what things were worth pursuing, or what to do when you come against things like nepotism. For more on that note, take a listen to our first episode!
Consider this your first check-in, too!
If you’ve started The Artist’s Way this week, or plan to start the first chapter, we hope you’ll consider this your weekly check-in too! How are your morning pages going? What did you do for your artist’s date? What did you find frustrating, or exciting?
And, on a practical note: our podcast should very shortly be available on Spotify, Apple Music, etc. Hooray!
With love,
Elena & Joy
The Artist's Way: Chapter 1