This is an unabashedly woo woo (or as a friend of mine puts it, “West coast”) book about unlocking your creative potential. Clearly, part of the project is to provide some therapy to people who might not be willing or able to go to actual therapy, so there’s a lot of stuff about working through your past and the various discouraging things people said to you that made you feel like you couldn’t make art. Everyone can make art! this book argues.
But there’s also a component of practice — specifically, there are two things that the book insists that you actually start doing. One is to write three pages, longhand, every morning. Annoyingly, this turns out to be extremely helpful. I moved through various stages of resistance and frustration (this takes so much time! can I only write 2 pages? Can I do it later?) before finally accepting that it really is extremely effective, and in fact, the less I want to do it, the more helpful it tends to be.
The other thing is to take yourself on an “artist date” every week. I interpret this, broadly, as taking yourself on a date that sparks your creativity and gives you a sense of play. So I count going to the movies and working on a puzzle, which is iffy, I know. Around the time I started doing the book (this is a book you do), I signed up for a ceramics class, which meant that I really was spending three hours a week making art, and that was really, really great.
I know that I probably need to actually do something like that — working a puzzle is restorative and pleasurable, which is also good! But I think for me specifically, something open-ended, where the final product is unknown, is crucial. And part of the point here is that you have to allow yourself that time — indeed, you have to MAKE that time; prioritize it. That’s actually the hardest part for me.
Anyways, if you can get past the kookiness (I do not say embrace it, just tolerate it) — which includes a lot of language about what God wants for you (like AA, the book claims that you don’t have to believe in a Christian God, just, you know, go with it) — it’s a fantastically effective program to get your creative energies going, or it was for me, anyhow.
Kasia Reads 