Cranky Little Writer
I am exceedingly cranky these days. Okay, these weeks. Surly, unsmiling, frustrated, resistant. Lost. Scared. There’s a book inside, wanting out. More than one, actually. But the unwritten books keep getting shoved to the bottom of the priorities pile. And every time I promise myself a chunk of time to get started on one of the books, and then break my promise (which I have been doing consistently these past weeks), I get a little tiny bit crankier.
I think I’m getting close to being 100% cranky.
Something else that’s fallen to the bottom of the laundry list is keeping myself fed artistically. Now THERE’S a prissy, pretentious, self-indulgent-sounding sentence. But I ask you: have you ever tried to drive your car when the gas tank was empty?
All you Artist’s Way fans out there will remember Julia Cameron insisting on weekly artist dates, and on keeping yourself “fed.” Skip breakfast, crap out by 11 am. Skimp on inspiring input, crap on everything within arm’s reach. Trust me, this is true. My Crap-o-Matic ™ is working overtime.
And trust Julia Cameron to bail me out once again. I was in Victoria (Vancouver Island) this past weekend for my cousin’s wedding, and on Sunday had time to visit Munro’s Books on Government Street for half an hour before heading over to the Ray house for a post-nuptial Mediterranean feast. Munro’s (if the name rings a bell, then know that yes, Alice Munro was once connected to this venerable establishment) has some of the best sale tables of any bookstore I’ve ever visited. And there, lying like a treasure half buried in the detritus, was a slim volume entitled Letters to a Young Artist: Building a Life in Art.
I don’t know if I qualify as young, but I think “newly hatched” would be fair to say. Certainly I’m finding myself in her responses to an imagined correspondent — my fears and anxieties, my ego and pretenses. Best of all, though, I’m finding food in her words. Here are a few:
“Creativity is like electricity. Throw the switch and it is there. But the switch is willingness, not mood.”
“Many artists quit the first time they hit a ‘bad’ spell. If we think we always have to make ‘good’ art, then when we hit a hard patch we don’t work through it. We skid to a halt. We think, ‘What’s this about? Maybe I don’t really have a vocation. Maybe I was just deluded, having visions of grandiosity. I’m no real artist ….’”
“You complain of being blocked, but a block is really just the ego’s resistance to working ‘badly.’”
“Making art takes guts. Choosing to be vulnerable and exposed rather than safely blocked is a risky venture.”
“You may exhaust yourself and your vitality by worrying too much if what you are making is ‘real’ art of ’serious’ art. Just make it. To quote the great movie director Martin Ritt, ‘I don’t have much respect for talent. It’s what you do with it that counts.’”
“Anything you do can be done artfully.”
“Artists have a lot of energy, and if that energy doesn’t go into art, it will go into other things. All sorts of petty things will seem important–and you’ll want to get them all ‘handled’ before getting back to your art. People spend whole lives waiting to get back to their art.”
“Unmade art will always pain and distract you. Maybe all you can do about world peace today is make some art and improve your own goddamn mood. What do you think?”
Ahem. I think she’s right. I think I have to submit my Quarter 2 GST report tomorrow, too, but I think she’s right. I can make art first.