The Artist’s Way: Week 1
Week 1 of The Artist’s Way is all about acknowledging our self-preservation instincts and the ways those instincts may prevent us from expressing ourselves creatively. The chapter begins by describing shadow artists—people who rationally decided not to become artists but fulfill their creative needs vicariously through others—and how easily we can rationalize away our desire to be creative. The next section urges us to overcome these creative blocks by regarding our inner artist as a child, and accordingly, encourages us to protect, reassure, and nurture that part of ourselves so we feel safe and secure enough to engage in creative play. This week puts an emphasis on creating a foundational sense of security and safety so that, as we continue through the course, we are open to spontaneous play and are aware of the obstacles that may arise.
The very beginning of this book makes a comment about synchronicity; how once you start the program, you’ll begin to notice patterns, confirmations, or other signs that relate to your creative path. I love this idea of synchronicity and encountered a few coincidences that related to things I had written about in my morning journal. Maybe it’s that whole “when you say you want something, the universe conspires in your favor” thing (I think that is a Paulo Coelho quote), or maybe it’s simply pattern recognition—like when you decide that you want a Ford Bronco as your new car, you start to see that car absolutely everywhere. Whatever it is, it’s a really fun coincidence I experienced during the first week.
Takeaway’s
The beginning of any course, plan, or journey is always the most fun and alluring part. It feels like that first week has the potential to change our lives as we know it. This program, in particular, can have a nice motivating effect where you’re rushed by all of the creative urges and potential you’ve ever experienced, and you feel ready to write that novel or become a master painter. At least, that’s how it was for me. But this week was also a nice moment to slow down and think about the reasons why I strayed from a creative path in the first place.
I definitely resonate with the idea of rationalizing away creative drives. Even as I worked through the week, I still found it difficult to imagine a life where art, and not a traditional career, could be what I do for a living. And I think that may be one of the biggest takeaways from this first week: that as a society, we often regard creativity as unsafe and even counterintuitive to a productive life. When I do imagine a life where all I do is create (in my case, it would be painting and writing), it almost feels too easy, or like I’m not contributing enough to society. So for me, as I continue through this program, I’ll have to start asking myself: what is the value of art? How might my original ideals about art or beauty be skewed or overly simplistic?
Because really, as someone who studies literature, I know (and regularly vouch for) the value of art in society. Art is a method of documentation: of history, communities, things like human rights, cultural movements, and peace. While on the one hand, my shadow artist is constantly defending art as a productive tool for social progress, on the other hand, it is saying, “yeahhhh, but not for you. You need to do something actually productive.” There is a bit of humor in recognizing this block, and I hope that as I go along, I can find ways to combine my creative drives with my desire to contribute to the world positively.
Conclusion
If you are finishing your first week of The Artist’s Way, let us know how you’re feeling at the end of week one in the comments. Or if you’re up for it, share a creative block that you uncovered this week and how you’d like to overcome that block in the coming weeks. We’ll see you in week two.
You can read all of the articles in this series here!
