Chapter 10: Recovering A Sense of Self-Protection 🎨 The Artist’s Way

Chapter 10 call recording, the link to our next call, stand out quotes and more on the exercises

Made it to week ten!! We mentioned last night that some of these concepts feel repetitive, but also hit right where we need them. Keep doing the work! Creativity is a practice. The growth never ends!

Scroll on to find:

• The call recording to listen to on a drive, walk, or wherever you need it

• My thoughts on Chapter 10

• Quotes I’m saving

• Exercise insights and thoughts from the group

• Next steps and our next call link!

Chapter 10 is called Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection and there’s a lot packed in here! The chapter covers creativity as a flow — this idea that creative energy moves through you rather than coming from you. The question isn’t how to generate ideas but how to stop blocking them! What is preventing you from tapping in?

Julia Cameron introduces the metaphor of pinching a straw, which is a very helpful visual for me. What are you using to pinch the straw? At the beginning of any creative act, it’s often a bit “shaky” and scary. In my experience, there is always friction before you reach flow. When we feel this friction, we all often find a way to stop it. We do this with sugar, doom-scrolling, and any other distractions.

When I feel this anxiety or look back and realize that I’ve been treating my artist this way, it’s comforting for me to remember that the goal isn’t to eliminate the anxiety or friction-filled feelings but to move with them.

It’s not going to pass. That’s just what it feels like to make something that matters! A cue for good work.

Aunt Karen brought up the idea of being an “armchair artist” and how this habit is a way we “pinch the straw,”

An armchair artist is someone who lives vicariously through other people’s creative output. Pinterest, instead of painting or watching someone on social media, builds the thing itself rather than taking your own steps. The armchair feels safe because you never have to risk being the actual artist — you just get to love art from a comfortable distance.

OR spending all your time on ideation that feels like work. Researching endlessly in the name of preparation. The three hours on a mood board that feels creative but is actually, if I’m honest, avoidance. I relate to this immensely.

And then we got to workaholism. I have always thought of my busyness as evidence that I’m serious. I say yes. I fill the calendar!! I am productive by any reasonable standard. And I have also, for years, felt the creative clog that comes with it. The resentment that creeps in. The “I would write if I just had time.” The sense that my real work is always waiting somewhere on the other side of everything I’m doing right now.

Julia Cameron calls it signal jamming. All that static of workaholism is drowning out the actual signal!!! The bottom lines help.

In the face of jealousy, workaholism, and numbing out, the antidote is self-compassion. Approaching your artist as someone who is worth taking care of! Oh, how beautiful — that small acts of kindness are what set us free.

The whole point is that self-punishment doesn’t produce creativity. Self-cherishing does!!! Not self-indulgence, not skipping the work, but approaching yourself like someone worth taking care of.

So much goodness — I can’t really do it justice. Tune into the recording!!