When things just happen to work out for you, do you chalk that up to coincidence, or is it something more? Julia Cameron would call that a synchronicity, and in Week 3 of The Artist’s Way, she had us keeping an eye out for them. According to Cameron, synchronicities are more than just happy accidents; they’re indications that the universe (or god, or whatever) is responding positively to active changes you’re making in your life.
This part of Cameron’s philosophy veers a bit dangerously into Power of Positive Thinking territory for many of our tastes. But in the spirit of doing the process in good faith, we continued to show up for our morning pages and artist dates. (By the way, if you’re just catching this now, a few of us at Defector are blogging our way through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way this winter.)
How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you?
Alex Sujong Laughlin: I did them 7-of-7 days, but definitely dragged on a couple days. On one day, I even stopped halfway through my third page. My energy for TAW stuff this past week has been really low because … of everything … and on top of that, I’ve been sick. TL;DR, I didn’t have a great time this week!
Sabrina Imbler: This was my first week doing 7-of-7 days, although some of my morning pages happened a little bit later in the morning. I went to a stationery store for what I thought would be my artist date and bought a beautiful new pen that uses green-black ink, as well as a roll of stickers, and I am not ashamed to say that this “prettifying” of my morning pages has made me enjoy them more. The greenish ink is lovely and delicate to look at, and I know that when I finish my three pages I can put a sticker in my journal, which is extremely motivating.
Alex: I know that Julia Cameron’s religiosity can be grating and unsettling for some people, but as a person who miraculously avoided religious trauma in my childhood, I find her blind faith in the process to be comforting at a time when I’m not doing so hot on my own. This week, I really let go of any desires I have to see something tangible come out of this process, and just submitted to doing my pages every day, with the hope that it’ll amount to something at the end of this.
Sabrina: I am definitely one of those people. I think I find it more comforting to know that the work I’m putting into my creative practice is entirely my own, and entirely in my control. I think this framing is more personally convincing to keep me accountable. I’ve been somewhat skimming sections where Cameron invokes God.
Ray Ratto: I did six days again (Julia Cameron can have my work but not my soul), and am of the opinion that I shall perform the tasks as requested without heeding her scold-powered proselytizing. They are still more chrome than creation, but I had a quick chat with true believer Alex and came away with a slightly better attitude about the whole enterprise, so hat-tip to “A,” as I and my phone have come to decide is her actual real name.
Chris Thompson: I did pages on five of the seven days this past week. I laughed aloud—the most dark-hearted, derisive laugh imaginable—while reading the start of the Week 4 chapter of the book. Cameron is talking about how the morning pages force a kind of accountability onto us, by not allowing us to get away with vague language about our deeper feelings—our real feelings—which to me is describing something like the opposite of the experience I am having. I read this chapter of the book literally while driving, while also drinking coffee, because it was the only space of time I had over the past week where I was both awake and not actively engaged in some other set of responsibilities. My morning pages are not these cathartic expressions of inner angst, or anyway if they are it is only in the way that a shopping list incidentally tells the story of a person’s ongoing desire to eat better. She uses the example of a person describing their official feelings as “I feel OK,” but harboring some more nuanced, often difficult real feeling inside of them, where they would prefer it be left unconfronted. My pages—even the typed ones—are done in a condition of frenzy; I am never more likely to resort to “shit is fine” than I am when trying to force out a third page of brain-vomit before my day begins.
I think she’s broadly right to describe a certain hesitation to unpack complicated things in the pages, but in my case it’s because I sincerely do not feel like I have time to do a thorough inventory of my inner life, sitting there beside a window with a comfy throw-blanket, immersed in my thoughts, functionally meditating. That just does not describe my life, or any of the space available within it. Nevertheless I remain willing to believe that good is coming of this, even while I am more certain than ever that Julia Cameron is my enemy.
Kathryn Xu: I really appreciate Chris’s take on Cameron’s approach requiring time, and I agree with Sabs in terms of not really vibing with the religiosity in Cameron’s text. I wouldn’t say I find it grating, necessarily, but it just doesn’t do anything for me, so I skip it. A lot of my engagement so far has mostly been about the process, and [said not in a 76ers fan voice] trusting the process, and finding ways of enabling myself to better engage in the process, which is: morning pages and artist date. I guess that has the benefit where I’m never really getting annoyed at Cameron, but also I don’t know if this is really extracting the most from the method.
Which is a lot of leadup to say that I regressed and only did my morning pages five times this week—I was laid low by various unfortunate bodily ailments. I also think I’ve reached a point where so much of my days feel dictated by things I am currently into, like K-pop or the start of the competitive Valorant season or the Australian Open or Eagles football, and I get exhausted with myself when my pages wind up becoming me dumping information about things I’m into, especially when I don’t have anything to say. That said, someday I will hit seven pages a week, just you watch!
Did you do your artist date this week? Remember that artist dates are a necessary frivolity. What did you do? How did it feel?
Alex: I actually didn’t! I could definitely fudge it and say that it was mainlining Dickinson one evening, but for me, the key to the artist dates is intention, and I didn’t do that this week. I did find that I missed having that deliberate space carved out for myself, though!
Kathryn: I also did not do my artist date this week because of the aforementioned bodily ailments, but if I’m picking a fudging, it’ll be wandering outside about, but not on, Broad Street to celebrate after the Eagles won the NFC Championship game. Being in such a shared affective space does do something to the brain, even if it doesn’t really count as an artist date.
Sabrina: I think this was actually my first real artist date. I went to McNally Jackson to buy a book I wanted, Simon Wu’s Dancing on my Own, and sat in the store for a little over an hour as I read half of Constance Debré’s Playboy, which is kind of a wild book but really fun to immerse yourself in. I loved how people wandered around me, having conversations and looking at books, and how I could faintly overhear the employees talking about which movies should win Oscars. I felt deeply inspired there, and actually picked up two other books on my way out: a translation of the South Korean poet Lee Seong-Bok’s craft lectures on poetry, and a Lydia Davis chapbook about cows called The Cows. Both felt like books that could get my mind whirring on new ways to approach my work.
Chris: The closest I came to an artist date this week was when I made myself coffee using the Epicurious “slightly fancy” method, which is something like 240 seconds slower and perhaps 20 percent more rewarding than the standard way, itself only a modest improvement on using the dang coffee maker. I really am trying, I swear.
Ray: Weirdly, I too went to a stationery/office supply store for my artist date, but only because that’s a thing I do anyway. I achieved no sense of creative nirvana, but I bought some pens I didn’t need based solely on barrel color, so maybe that’s actually painting for the new millennium. I also hit a book store for the same reason, and my great inspirational moment was finding a book my wife wanted that the store clerk could not find. Thus inspired, I went home in triumph.
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them.
Sabrina: Maybe this is silly, but I almost felt too inspired this week? I felt overcome with the urge to bind books again—something I did and loved in college—and went to a craft store and replenished my bookbinding supplies. I am hoping that I can find a way to do my creative writing work and my creative bookbinding work without burning out on both ends. Maybe if I bind books while watching trash, it’ll even out.
Alex: Wow that is so exciting! I have occasionally been served bookbinding videos on TikTok and it’s always extremely satisfying to watch. One interesting thing I noticed this week was that I woke up in the middle of the night with a strong desire to purge a bunch of items I don’t need. Since then, I’ve sold some things on Facebook Marketplace, given some things away to friends, and dropped off books in my neighborhood little free library. Imagine my shock when—spoiler—Cameron talks explicitly about purging items in the Week 4 reading! It all definitely feels connected, though I’m not quite ready to say they are for sure.
Chris: When doing my pages over the weekend, I was inspired to make a list of things that I have to do, which is not a normal practice for me. Then Monday morning I again made a list, mid-pages. I hope this habit sticks. I will say that my workday Monday felt better and was less angsty with the list in front of me. I am dreading the deprivation of the week ahead. I sometimes feel deprived as hell as it is; on Wednesday of last week I read a chapter of a book while leaning out of the shower I snuck in during the 90 minutes that my child was taking a nap.
I would just like to add that every week I read what the rest of you are experiencing and how you are approaching this process and [Earnest Mode Engaged] I really do find it all very inspiring. I see you intentionally tuning your minds to the inspiration setting, and scrambling out of personal holloways of various depths, and in general making yourselves vulnerable to this thing, and it’s just extremely fucking cool to me. You guys are cool!
Ray: I now have an actual planner (it’s called Carpe F*cking Diem, if you’re looking to profanely organize the next 11 months of your life) to write down my weekly tasks and other semi-important data. I feel slightly more in control knowing that when my wife does her daily “Did you remember to …” I can say that I actually did. That sense of relief is as spiritual as it gets for me, and it also helps me keep Julia’s busybody instincts in check. She now feels more like a vanquished foe and less like an existential bone spur. That’s a win.
Kathryn: One of my friends and I are planning on doing a book club, i.e. reading a book and talking about it together. We are notoriously bad at delivering on these sorts of things, but we both officially ordered our respective copies, so now it’s bound to happen at some point. Eventually!
I also think, generally speaking, I’ve felt a little bit more invigorated creatively, if just, uh, outside of work and my Artist’s Way tasks. I don’t know what this stems from, or if it’s just because I’ve been listening to more music and engaging in more new stuff rather than rewatching old trash or if it’s because the Eagles are in the Super Bowl, baby!
