Fear and Laziness in Being an Artist
Week 9 of the Artist’s Way course for recovering and building creativity
Last week, I wrote about Week 8 of Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way course to build creativity. If you purchased the book and are following along, I hope this past week was fruitful. To the rest of you, I invite you to join in and comment how the course is helping (or hindering) you in your lives!
In Week 8, we sat with our failure to find the lessons contained within. We require strength to continue being who we are through both success and failure, as each presents more challenges to surmount. Although I have always been capable of pushing through hardship, very rarely have I learned from it.
Instead, I forced myself to work, negating the fun I could have derived from the process as well as the education I could have found in the result. Pushing blindly through a dense forest will ultimately arrive at a grove — but we may not arrive at the grove we hoped to find.
Week 9 encourages us to evaluate the process. Are we headed in the right direction? Or are we only heading in a direction? When we acknowledge the fear inside, we find the compassion to nurture our child artist.
Week 8 recap
The recaps are probably a bit boring by now, and Cameron calls them a critical part of the process, so…here goes!
Last week, I described the process of writing Morning Pages waxing and waning — and I was waning. As could be predicted once I published the article, I waxed last week. Nothing like life to prove a previous article wrong.
Morning Pages continue to be a great source not only of inspiration for writing, but the place where I can work out difficult problems without actually having to live them first. I admit, I now have a healthy addiction to writing my Morning Pages.
My Artist Date can only be described as “unremarkable.” I went on it, I enjoyed it in precisely the same way I had in the past, and then I went home feeling refreshed.
Last week, I mentioned moving the Artist Date back to Thursday to make it feel more special. My intuition turned out to be correct — Thursday does feel more special for it being in the middle of the week. I find that to be an odd psychological trick, but anything that makes me feel more valuable to myself is worth continuing.
Blocked is not lazy
Week 9 of The Artist’s Way course is titled “Recovering a Sense of Compassion.” Given the blunt force trauma of previous chapters, I found considering compassion now a bit comic. But Cameron only winds up for a pitch — that we must identify and recognize what we feel as artists before we can overcome our obstacles. Compassion comes afterward, as we decide how to overcome.
We often chastise ourselves for not being creative. The truth, however, is creativity is difficult when we feel blocked. But the ebb of creative flow is not being lazy.
On the contrary, we typically prevent ourselves from creating. Lazy people avoid effort. But blocked artists find every possible reason not to begin the creative process, and the result is a massive effort of self-hatred, grief, jealousy, and denial.
Rather than viewing the creative process as consistently taking baby steps, the blocked artist sets up an ultimatum: the art must be great in one fell swoop or it is not worth doing at all.
Last week, I mentioned Cameron’s “filling the form,” meaning we show up every day, whether there is work to do or not. Because writers write. Actors act. Dancers dance.
A blocked artist believes if she has not written an epic, Times Bestseller novel, she is not a writer.
In a society geared toward megasuccess and billionaires playing at rocket company hobbies, being an artist is already viewed as an act of rebellion. But the requirement to be great or to go home makes it difficult to be an artist at all.
The blocked artist is not lazy. The blocked artist is only afraid.
Fear and loathing in my gender
In an obvious parallel to gender transition, fear holds a power over the transgender comparable to no other. We want to transition. But we don’t. Instead, we find every possible reason not to begin transition, and the result — as it is for the artist — is a massive effort of self-hatred, grief, jealousy, and denial.
Gender transition is rebellion — and the blocked transgender person believes if they are not capable of passing in public, it is not worth trying at all. Society must view them as cisgender or nothing. Transition feels like much too large of a project. Fear wins.
The truth, however, is far more complicated. Most people are ambivalent of gender transition. Many people respect any effort whatsoever toward living authentically — it may even be labeled courageous to begin gender transition.
So what prevents the struggling artist as well as the aching transgender person from taking the first step?
Sympathy for the inactivity
Cameron sums up success in one word: enthusiasm. From the Greek for “being inspired by the gods,” enthusiasm implies a commitment. Enthusiasm is to find the play in what we do and to enjoy the doing as much as the done.
For many of us, however, not doing provides comfort. Cameron notes the tendency to become addicted to the sympathy we receive from others when blocked. Rather than risk the attempt and — possibly — to fail, we bemoan our state of inactivity and soothe our stagnation with the salve of sympathy.
Not writing becomes fodder for fools to sycophantize. Not dancing prevents the pain of being ponderous. And not taking steps to transition obviates observation by the cisgender.
And this, writes Cameron, is why we must be compassionate for our fear.
Until we feel and process our resentment for being an amateur, until we allow our resistance to give its message and dissipate, we cannot move forward.
Feel your anger. Damn the critics, your parents, your friends, your enemies, yourself!
Feel your pain. Cry for your failures, and cry for your successes!
Acknowledge the hidden payoff for remaining immobile.
Then go out and do it.
So what’s next?
As per standard operating procedure: Morning Pages every day. The Artist Date on Thursday. These serve me well, and I already know I will continue them after I complete The Artist’s Way course.
Inside, however, I will find the excuses I make to myself to prevent my success. I will try to care for my child artist — and child woman — as best as I can, nurturing them to grow into adults.
This week, I commit to enjoy what I do, who I am, and how I live. I will inhale enthusiasm and exhale art.
Until next week!
