Becoming a Warrior Woman
Week 8 of the Artist's Way course to develop creativity
Last week, I wrote about Week 7 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!
Week 7 reminded us how connecting to the Universe and allowing it to flow through us is critical to accomplishing goals greater than ourselves. By accepting — even embracing — the imperfection of any creation, we see the act of creativity more holistically. We face our fears, feel them, integrate them, learn from them, and keep growing.
As I learned the hard way before Week 7, allowing the Universe to help is more difficult than it sounds. I did not accept the gifts the Universe offered me. I disbelieved the love family and friends offered me. As a result, I burned out frequently. Failure cut deeply, because I was powered only by my own tenacity.
Week 8 teaches the value derived from failure. When we allow the Universe to fuel our creativity, we possess the strength to mourn…and move on.
Week 7 recap
The past week of Morning Pages felt subdued to me. Where in previous weeks (like last week) I was inspired to write several pages of thought just to get it out of my head, the past week felt mundane by comparison. My inspiration waxes and wanes, which makes this week’s lesson about the strength to persist timely.
I went to my Artist Date, although I scheduled it for Friday instead of Thursday. The choice of day appears unimportant, but as I left for my Friday Artist Date, I realized it seemed less special to me. I was only starting the weekend early — I wasn’t doing something kind for myself. I still did something kind, which was part of the value, but I changed this week’s Artist Date back to Thursday. I want to pamper myself with a special time just for me. I hope to recapture that sense this week.
Mourning our losses
Week 8 of The Artist’s Way course is titled “Recovering a Sense of Strength.” At first, it seemed odd that it took Week 8 out of 12 to discuss the strength required to be an artist, but I misunderstood Cameron’s meaning. Cameron does not mean finding the strength to begin creative acts. She means maintaining the strength to continue creating even in the face of loss and failure.
Persistence, however, is not ignoring the past and the pain involved in failure. Instead, Cameron writes we must acknowledge our loss, feel the pain, and mourn what we attempted to do. Even more valuable is to share the pain with others, which states it explicitly and grants us the opportunity to heal.
Further, we must be able to discriminate between true loss of failure and pain felt from criticism. Some criticism is valuable — eliciting a response similar to “So that’s what I missed!” Good criticism lifts the art and the artist to another level, enabling a better result on the next attempt.
Nasty are the jealous
In contrast, many people — in particular, those who consider themselves experts — are adept only at criticizing, not doing. They may tear another’s art to shreds, but never create great art on their own. Their criticism grows from a place of jealousy, which we discussed last week.
Consider gender transition — those who are not invested in our success may grow in nastiness the more authentically we live our lives. Our success may challenge them and their own life progress. It is easier to cut off the heads of others to appear taller.
Well-meaning or otherwise, criticism comes from all corners. The nastiness I experienced during my social transition was worst from the transgender community itself.
As artists, however, we must appreciate our growth — all growth, especially effort purely for the sake of growth. Jealous criticism is to be discarded. When jealousy cuts all support from under us, we must summon the strength to learn and create on our own.
Surviving criticism isn’t easy. A good support network can help any artist, but in the absence of support, continuing to do the job is vital.
Devaluing the product
We are trained from an early age to value the products of our efforts. That is, an effort is good if the tangible result is beyond criticism. We are rarely trained to value learning to become better (possibly because the experts above would have nothing to criticize).
No creative act is good the first time we attempt it. But improvement cannot occur without the first attempt, and the second, and the third…
There is a risk we may never create great art, no matter how many times we attempt it. But we are guaranteed not to create even mediocre art without first doing it badly.
To return to the transgender experience, not every one of us is capable of living our lives the way we dream — to look the way we wish, to maintain certain important relationships, to be accepted by our peers. But we must start living our lives in order to find out.
Enshrining the process
While products are valuable to measure progress, Cameron values the creative process — the consistent learning by doing — more highly. She labels the process of consistent effort “filling the form.”
Filling the form means showing up even when there is no work to be done. If we are not immediately creating art, we are learning, we are mentoring, and we are contributing.
I’ve seen this concept expressed many ways:
Writers write.
Actors act.
Dancers dance.
Runners run.
Transgender women woman. (OK, I admit I made this last one up.)
You will be a writer, an actor, a dancer, a runner, a woman — if you keep doing it. The labels — “writer,” “actor,” “woman” — are irrelevant.
Intention does not make an artist. Action makes an artist.
So what’s next?
Keeping going has never been my struggle. I can push myself harder than even I realize. Then I burn out, fall apart, and do it all over again.
But consistency is key to sustainability. I believe consistency in Morning Pages and Artist Dates have helped me learn to care for myself better. Self-care is the key to my sustainability.
This week, I will remember the lesson from my friend Jill Eng: being a warrior doesn’t mean winning. It means getting through to the other side and keeping going.
Until next week!