Maintaining a connection to your creative side can feel idiotic at best and selfish at worst during times like these. We're officially halfway through The Artist's Way, and this week we're definitely negotiating the tension between nudging our creativity and the reality of the world right now.
It would be an understatement to say spirits aren't high right now. Julia Cameron's blithe, prosperity gospel-y point of view may come from a sincere place, but it feels especially grating and out of touch at the moment. Luckily for us, having a common annoyance can also be a useful source of inspiration.
How many days this week did you do your morning pages? How was the experience for you?
Alex Sujong Laughlin: I did 5/7 days this week. It was a wild week for me: I went up to Boston for Kelsey's book event and then drove down to Pennsylvania for the weekend, and all the travel had me feeling so scattered and weird, so I didn't do morning pages on the main traveling days. Julia would probably say that I felt scattered and weird because I didn't do morning pages those days, to which I say: Shush.
Chris Thompson: I did six days this week, and missed Sunday due to once again failing to plan ahead. My entry on Saturday was mostly me scolding myself for the poor quality of morning pages over the preceding handful of days. I think one day in there I wrote just two paragraphs of stuff before I got pulled into another direction, and then forgot to return. Alex, I also felt scattered and messy this week. And one of my entries was really miserable dark stuff about, like, being a big huge fraud. But I feel weirdly better now? Perhaps it was cathartic to just look at some indulgent self-loathing and feel silly about it and mutter, "OK, settle down," at myself.
Sabrina Imbler: I did 6/7 days this week, as I did Sunday's pages in the evening on the train. This was the first week where I started to write about writing in my morning pages, as I've been working on a few personal projects simultaneously. And I did find it helpful to sketch out some of those pieces in my pages, or even reflect on the experience of writing them the day before. I never referenced my morning pages when returning to those pieces, but I am sure the working-through I did smeared some residue in my brain? At least I hope. Chris, I really find that use of morning pages to be the most helpful: getting out all my anxieties or fears, not to squash them, but to make sure they take up less space in my brain.
Chris: That's encouraging. It's not that I've been avoiding doing this, necessarily, but it has been easier against the daily time pressure to just, like, write about how stupid the pages are, or how actively angry I am at Julia Cameron, or to describe for the 1,000th day in a row what my yard looks like with snow on the ground. But I was in such an incredibly terrible mood on the morning of the 13th that what came out of me was straight poison.
Ray Ratto: Chris stole my modus operandi, which is to hate-write my way through the task. Then again, I hate-task my way through nearly everything, which explains the low esteem in which people hold me. But I did my six days, and tried to figure out new ways to dance to the same song. I failed, but I did have an ode to Pliny The Younger (the beer, not the historical figure) that I kind of liked (the beer, not the writing). I am beginning to trust that whatever I'm meant to get out of this will happen without me realizing it, and if it is nothing whatsoever, the galactic pixies will understand.
Kathryn Xu: Chris, that's been a decent chunk of my morning page strategy, too. I did another five pages this week. It was also hectic on my end due to traveling a good amount and standing outside in freezing weather for three-and-a-half hours in order to see Jalen Hurts and Jordan Mailata's beautiful faces in person and having a bit of a weird post–Super Bowl parade weekend. I am currently ill, I'm sure completely unrelated to the three-and-a-half hours I spent standing outside to see Jalen Hurts and Jordan Mailata's beautiful faces. Honestly, I felt like most of my enrichment this week came from more of the artist date stuff I did.
Sabrina: To be honest, one of my pages this week was purely devoted to a number of [redacted] threats against various people. My internal well of poison is always refilling itself, so it feels good to dump it somewhere.
Ray: Welcome to the club. We'll do your membership papers later, but you're in charge of refreshments for next week. But I now fully understand why your writing specialty is the non-human kingdom. It is eminently superior in every measurable way.
Did you do your artist date this week? What did you do? How did it feel?
Alex: So I am allowing myself to define artist dates somewhat broadly right now, because I am feeling like I'm in a distinct crunch. The play I've signed up to do has been a really encompassing experience that has been so much more than just memorizing lines and performing them. One night, we did a visualizing exercise where we spent a couple hours making pieces of art inspired by lines in the play. I made a collage with paper bags and newsprint and line drawings, and it was a really nice way to spend an evening.
Chris: I wound a roll of Portra 160 film into my little camera Friday and bundled up against the cold and went out into the beautifully sunlit fields to take a bunch of deeply amateurish photos. Then I pestered Giri and Israel about my new photography hobby. This was truly a hoot. I blew through the whole roll and now I have a roll of CineStill 800t in there (for film-quality low-light photography), because I have lost my mind. I'm sure the pros at the camera shop are going to snort noisily when they see my terrible photos. I don't care! This felt like a very healthy artist date, and I have been thinking about photography pretty regularly in the days since. I even ordered a book.
Sabrina: I didn't get to a proper artist date this week, as I was working Sunday and only had one real free day. But I did spend Saturday afternoon taking Jaime Green's class on how to use Scrivener, which is the word-processing program designed for big writing projects. I am really glad I attended the class: Some of it was familiar, as I occasionally used Scrivener for my first book, but much of it was new and helped me understand why people use Scrivener in the first place. Maybe I could have learned some of this if I watched the freaking "How to use Scrivener" tutorial video, but I didn't, and here we are. I loved learning that you could change the icons of your various documents/folders, which I assume many people do to communicate with their future selves but I now plan to do solely for the sake of being cutesy.
Alex: OMG, I am so interested in and intimidated by Scrivener.
Kathryn: I did one and possibly two artist dates this week! The first was just hanging out while my roommate was playing Dragon Age: Inquisition on my PC and opening up my little notes app and making a "themed K-pop listening" note, which was basically me putting together a curation of three or four songs per some categories that I could theoretically present to an audience, including stuff like "sweetune synth-pop bangers" and "i'm not scared enough when i listen to music." It was pretty fun, because I basically have two playlists I listen to regularly, one of which contains every single K-pop song I've listened to and kind of liked, and the other one of which contains every single non–K-pop song I've listened to and kind of liked, so actively doing organization for my music listening was nice.
The second artist date was reading a book that I was book-clubbing with a friend, Consent by Jill Ciment; very good, highly recommend. I put together similar little notes of the things I wanted to talk about. I say "book club," but it's really just an excuse to read books we've been meaning to read and make sure we call more regularly. But I found the experience of both putting together my notes and of talking to my friend to be really refreshing and necessary and plainly nice.
Sabrina: Wow, that's such a sweet friend routine, Kathryn! Also I'm very intrigued by this playlist organization strategy …
Kathryn: I love my 70-hour playlist that's titled "Most Everything." Can't sue me for false advertising!
Chris: Hmm, I possibly also did a second artist date? On Saturday we engaged a babysitter and went back to the art gallery from a couple weeks ago to finish the exhibit, which mostly meant gawking at a bunch of insanely cool abstract expressionism. This took about 45 minutes, and ruled.
Ray: I worked on my 2025 baseball notebooks (spring training stuff, etc.; Kathryn will get it) because I am a secret nerd. It's tedious work, but getting through it was a sufficient reward. Trying new ways to mow through the old detritus is its own art, I've decided, and Julia will just have to deal with my recalcitrance in her own fashion and idiom.
Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it?
Sabrina: This was the first week when I absolutely experienced synchronicity. On Monday, I was blessed with comp tickets to the NYC book launch of the beloved Kelsey McKinney, featuring the similarly beloved Rachelle Hampton, and I invited my friend Hannah. When we got there, I tried to introduce Hannah and Jasper only to realize they already met each other when I asked them to do this really weird favor for me last year. After the book launch, Hannah and I walked back to the train—in severely romantic snowfall, perhaps the only time in my life when I have found Times Square charming—where I suddenly saw, and who could have guessed this, the beloved Lauren Theisen, who had just seen a Broadway show in the area. Lauren and I got to ride the train back together, because we both live in the same neighborhood, and when I got off my stop I took this shortcut through a basketball court near my apartment, where I saw a man writing a name in the snow: Sabina. So close! I'll take it. I wish Sabina well!
Alex: This is so delightful, Sabs! My weekly list of synchronicities is getting longer each week, and also more personal, so I don't really want to share them, but I have been noticing them more and more and they feel like little winks from the universe whenever it happens.
Ray: You should have harangued him for misspelling your name.
Chris: I didn't notice any synchronicities this week. I feel like I need to adjust my eye level, so to speak, in order to spot these. I feel like there's a state of mind I could enter where synchronicities would catch my attention, but I also feel like possibly I am only in that state of mind for a few hours per year.
Kathryn: My roommate and I are addicted to having little drink treats, especially over the weekend, so it usually winds up with us going to one coffee shop in the morning for a coffee and then another one later in the afternoon for a less-caffeinated drink. During Sunday morning, we went to our very good corner coffee shop where we're friendly with a couple baristas in the morning. And then in the afternoon, we went to a coffee shop further away that's usually our post-work/evening place of choice because it's open until 8 p.m., and on our walk back, we actually saw one of our corner coffee shop baristas! Having these casual relationships with kinda-strangers is one of the best things about living in a [nerd voice] walkable neighborhood.
Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery?
Kathryn: I've already touched on my constant ailments and tribulations, but in summary: I was in a bit of a funk this weekend for multiple reasons, including the fact that the weather was pretty rainy and gross, and then was struck with physical ailments on top of that.
Sabrina: Not to be a total downer but I have been struggling a lot, what with everything that is happening all the time in this country—today I'm thinking about Sam Nordquist. The vibe of checking in with friends has shifted a lot from "How've you been?" to "Are you doing OK?" All of this is to say I have felt even more estranged from Julia Cameron and her wisdoms this past week. They feel like they are written for another world. Sometimes she is so out of touch it’s funny: "Recently, I bought myself a horse for the first time in a decade." And other times her advice is just unattainable: recommending a "10-minute mini-bath after work"—what the hell is a mini-bath? Telling people to go to Chinatown to buy cheap things? I understand what she's saying has a deeper meaning—to make space for play and creativity—but I have really fallen off the horse in terms of doing her little exercises and lists. Sometimes I feel too depressed; other times I feel too annoyed. Just kidding—I don't even have a horse to fall off!
Chris: To Julia Cameron I say, "Screw you and the first horse that you bought in a decade and then rode in on."
Alex: I have been feeling similarly, Sabs. I particularly had trouble with Julia's perspective on money this week. It felt very prosperity gospel the way she seems to believe money and opportunities just come to people when they're ready to receive them. The way I've been making peace with it for the sake of continuing the process is to take her guidance on the smallest, most micro level I can possibly distill it to, and not try to engage its political implications as much. I don't know if this is a good thing. I am trying to remain in a place of curiosity instead of cynicism as much as possible, and balancing those two things is a real challenge.
Ray: In fairness to Julia, which is a phrase I immediately regret typing, she wrote this while the American apocalypse was still in its conceptual stage. She knew nothing of the shithousery to come, so I find ignoring her cheerier bromides a relatively easy task. She means well, but she is still someone I would change my name to avoid. Whatever I get out of this is on me, not her.
