Sneak Peek at My Weekend on the Water Artist's Way Mini Class

The following is cross-posted on SCBWI Western Washington's blog. We have a creativity retreat coming up in October with great opportunities to customize your experience: member-led workshops, discussions, critiques, private writing time, walks in the woods — you decide! If you'd like to join us, register soon!

Hello, fellow retreaters! I can't wait to get to IslandWood and start soaking up the atmosphere, hobnobbing with you all, and marinating in all things KIDLIT & CREATIVITY until it's time to board that ferry back to reality.

I'm also excited to be leading a couple of exploratory sessions for anyone interested in learning more about Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. In addition to following this creativity practice on my own since 2010, I've participated in two outstanding full-program workshops and attended one phenomenal intensive weekend retreat led by Cameron herself. I find the program tools easy to incorporate into my routine and the program's underlying philosophy adaptable to different belief systems, so I really enjoy sharing info with anyone thinking about giving it all a whirl.

Here's the official description of what I've planned for our retreat:

The Artist's Way Mini Class 
Julia Cameron's 12-week program consists of targeted exercises and strategies meant to help anyone cultivate a more rewarding personal creativity practice. Along the way, students confront negative patterns and learn how to more easily and consistently access their creative talents. This mini class will cover key Artist's Way principles and give attendees a taste of the program's simple but effective methods. 

A few Artist's Way principles in action.

Saturday: Introduction to The Artist's Way
We'll take a quick look at the progression of themes in a full Artist’s Way cycle (from reclaiming a sense of creative safety to embracing creative possibility and beyond). Then we’ll discuss Morning Pages, Artist Dates, and Walks — aka the program’s hallmark “creative recovery” tools. And we’ll end with a short reflection exercise to start challenging any self-limiting beliefs that might be keeping you from following your personal creative path.

Important note about what Artist's Way techniques can help you discover and accept about your personal creative path: It's not my path or someone else's vision of your path or a path Julia Cameron lays out for you or a facsimile of the latest It-creative's path. It's all YOURS, and that's what makes it right.

Sunday: Artist's Way Hands-On Workshop
This session will include two fun hands-on activities designed to help you connect with some of your deepest creative interests and tap in to your personal power as a creative being. 

Translation in case that didn't sound fun: You will (1) interpret a relevant topic through a stream-of-consciousness drawing activity; and (2) rip up paper goods and use glue to create something new.

Is The Artist's Way right for you? I have no idea! It wasn't right for me until ... it was. But I do believe taking it for a test run in this setting will offer concrete creativity-boosting strategies you can later use, and benefit from, regardless of whether you decide to further explore the program after the retreat.

Each session stands alone, and everyone is welcome at one or the other or, of course, both.

I hope some of you will join me!

I Feel Some Blogging Coming On

As my career has evolved since I opened this blog in 2007, the blog itself has devolved. I've never wanted to shutter it; even in lean-posting times it's felt like a hardy living organism to me — one that can rebloom anytime I show up with my watering can and a little TLC. That's why I've been content to let it quietly sit for seasons at a time.

Part of my own growth in the last several years has involved intentionally refocusing my professional efforts. My goal has been to step off the very pleasant-but-specific career train I'd boarded when I first started freelancing full time (basically because it showed up at my local depot one day), and to work on claiming the career that I really want. And guess what — that takes time and considerable effort. It also, for me, has made it difficult to blog with anything resembling regularity. While writing about whatever I'm experiencing does help me process those whatevers, trying to do that on the blog has not appealed to me. So I've kept the writing-as-processing to my morning pages, which — as my fellow Artist's Way devotees know — are neither meant nor fit for public consumption.

Now is now, though — as everyone knows — and I've entered a new season. Earlier goals have been reached, realistic newer ones have been set, and all systems seem Go for continuing to move in the right direction. Which all makes for a more focused me and the proper time to say: I feel some blogging coming on.

I know that I'm ready to reengage, because I keep having post ideas while just going about my life. I even have a new overall blog theme in mind, and that makes both sides of my writer-editor split personality smile. (Those dames like them some purposeful structure.)

To any readers out there, I invite you to follow along with a simple "All aboard!" Rides on this blog train are always free, and you can hop on and off as you like.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what my newer goals might be/what theme I might apply to the blog at this stage,  I thank you for paying enough attention to question those things! Don't worry, though, all will be covered in future blogs. For you, and for me.

Reading Deprivation Week Check-In #2

Eleven-thirty on a Friday night, and I just finished a little revision session with my picture book WIP. This is the kind of thing a delightfully deprived girl does. The fun part was that it was . . . fun! Not work-like at all. I hadn't looked at this manuscript in about a week, so the experience had that perspective going for it. But I do believe that my mind is less gunked up than usual right now, which sharpens my Revision Vision. Always a pleasure to do business with that!

Before I forget to say so:

The weekend is about to test my commitment. The weekend and my just-home-from-a-three-week-trip husband, that is.

Tonight was easy to handle because the husband couldn't keep his eyes open much past nine. But I will want to spend lots of time with him Saturday and Sunday, and I think that could take me out of my deprivation element and cause vulnerability. Then again, maybe having him home will make it easier to sail on through. We shall see.

Random observations and details from Deprivation's Depths Dailies (a lame riff on my all-time favorite album title):

• A big hindsight clue that it was time to redo this exercise was my uncharacteristic impatience with absolute nothings related to normal media consumption. Examples—
• An inability to read The Descendants without hearing George Clooney as narrator. (I have not seen the film.)
• Annoyance with distinct types of incendiary political/sensationalized entertainment headlines that made me want to tally examples to support a point I wasn't making about articles I wasn't reading.
• Slower-by-mere-seconds browser performance on the home wi-fi network versus the router connection.
• Newly restricted fast forwarding with On Demand programs.
• Not being able to control exactly how a single thumbs-up/-down tap affects a Pandora station's playlist.

• This week's experience makes me want to read more than I already do. More of the so-called good stuff. But I know that more of that is not "the" more I really need.
• It did not fly, but I spent several minutes attempting to justify watching the movie Young Adult. (It's "work related," people!)
• I made a cool cover collage for my writing notebook.
• Seemingly out of nowhere today, I caught myself singing along with the car radio. Please note that I had NO memory of turning the thing on.
• Instead of the traditional three morning pages, I've been routinely doing five . . . and needing to make myself stop there.
• I've been eating less this week. That wasn't a goal — it has just been happening.

And now, as Day 6 begins due to that technicality known as the time of day, I will end my Day 5 report and see how fast I can fall asleep.

Reading Deprivation Week Check-In #1

It is Day 3 of my deprivation, and I was just this minute blown away to notice that it's almost 9:00 in the evening. I haven't even considered supper yet.

I've been up since 5:00 a.m., which is definitely not my norm. (Six-thirty girl here.) But at 3:20, the newspaper carrier hurled the Seattle Times so hard at my front door that I half-expected to find the paper inside. I shut my eyes back down only to get a pointy dog nose to the face 10 minutes later. The pup replied in the affirmative when asked "Do you need to go outside?", so out into the rain we both went and into the swampy yard, she went . . . and went. Safely back in beds after wiping feet, drying faces, and rearranging blankets, we two girls drifted back into dreamland. But then, at 4:55, a shaving mirror spontaneously un-suctioned itself from the shower wall and crashed onto the bathroom floor, effectively ending the night for good.

After that early start I just explained in way too much detail, what blows me away about the nine o'clock hour-ness of the moment is how super fast this day flew past me.

Day 1 of Reading Deprivation Week did no such thing. That was a long one. I experienced a generalized (yet sometimes quite specific) antsy feeling from morning to night. I mean, I could see the new book I'd just started on my nightstand, my stack of magazines on the coffee table, my piles of research on top of/under my desk, my two waiting Netflix mailers on the banister, and the portal to the World Wide Web every time I looked at my computer screen.

I was aware all day that I'd committed to the deprivation process, but all day it seemed like every single idea I had for what to do next involved reading or watching or consuming. Those ideas flowed. Now — in case you were wondering — this week is NOT about not getting work done. It's not about zero reading. It IS, however, about sticking to the necessities. So on that day, especially, I had to constantly ask myself, Do I need to do this to further my work/successfully live my life today, or this week? Because, wow, were my peepers eager to land on some text (familiar shampoo bottles and nutritional information, anyone?). And, boy, was my trigger finger ever clicky. Click on, click off. Click, click, click — click it Off, click a little more.

Day 2 was easier than Day 1 but had its own standout moments of forgetfulness. Such as my suddenly wondering, Hmm, what's a better-for-this-sentence synonym for imploring? — and then soon realizing that I'd just spent several extra, unnecessary, low-quality minutes searching the online thesaurus.

Or here's one: After knocking off a little earlier than usual for the workday (perhaps because I got more done?), I plopped down in front of the TV — without thinking it through — and thought, Ooh, I never watch television at this hour! This would be a great time to watch that On Demand show from last week . . . no, wait a minute — STOP!!

But like I said, Day 3 has gone fast for me, and that's because a sense of freedom finally set in. I've stayed busy and productive and experienced the added bonuses of constantly bursting into song (I think I did that just once on Day 1 and only a couple of times yesterday), coming up with yummy thrown-together meals, busting out my happy walker's grin even in the ridiculously wet rain, and jotting down and starting to implement the steady stream of ideas shooting out of my brain and onto the pages of my WIP (yippee!) . . .

Four more days to go. That I will continue being tested (and may occasionally slip up) is a given. But now that I'm practically halfway through the week, all I want to do is slow down time to make sure I don't miss a tickety-tockety minute of it.
 

It's Reading Deprivation Week at My House

Tonight, I'm starting my second-annual participation in a self-imposed Reading Deprivation Week — a practice originally described/prescribed in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. To better reflect humankind's current state of distractability, Cameron now calls the exercise Media Deprivation Week, and that makes perfect sense. But I am attached to the original title, so . . . there.

What this means for me this week:

No reading or other media consumption beyond what I truly need to do for work and/or to survive. For example, I will read STOP signs while driving. But. No TV, no movies. No talk radio. No podcasts or YouTube videos or audiobooks. No web surfing. No listening to music with lyrics or spending time on nonessential emails. No social media.

Yikes!!!! What's the big idea here, anyway?

Well, the idea is to limit your exposure to the very external influences that clog your brain, take up your valuable time, and get between you and your creative output. Yes, reading is good. But the truth is that sometimes the habitual act of reading the daily news or even great LITrachoor can cause enough of a disconnect between you and your creative self to effectively break down your creative process, leaving you less creatively productive than you could be (at a minimum) or — gasp! — completely creatively BLOCKED (at the maximum)!

Cameron says,  "For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction. We gobble the words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own."

Reading Deprivation Week helps dampen the excess noise so you can hear yourself think and get back to doing what YOU do.

I know from last year's experience that this exercise is difficult at first but then quickly becomes comfortable. Enjoyable, even. The rewards far outweigh any perceived sacrifices. I've actually been wanting to do Round 2 of this for a few months, but one thing or another has made me save it ("save it," I said, not "put it off"!) for the right time.

Turns out, this coming week is perfect for me, and it. I look forward to embracing Deprivation and seeing exactly how it fills me up.

Please do check this space for check-ins throughout the week. I don't know how many times I'll squawk, but I will be sure to post any blog updates to Twitter and Facebook using simple shares that do not involve my engagement. (In other words, I will post and run!) Please feel free to discuss any of it among yourselves in the comments this week. And I'll answer any questions you ask me next week.

And now, without further ado . . .

Let Reading Deprivation Week begin!

KidLit Quote of the Week #1

I've decided to do a weekly post in which I share one of the countless quotes I've collected about writing and books. I'll focus on quotes by children's authors, quotes by others about writing/creativity that I think can apply to writing for kids, and passages from children's books.

Why start this now? How about "Because it's Tuesday." It'll be fun!

This inaugural KLQOTW is by an author I admire for his versatility and inspirational personal story. I saw him speak at either an IRA or NCTE conference in the 1990s (ah, the books* he signed for me say the year was 1997), and his advice on finding success as a children's writer is timeless:

"Stay out of the refrigerator, read good books, steal good ideas, develop good writing habits, and marry wealthy."

—Jack Gantos

Good one, huh. And in a Universe-is-funny COMPLETE coincidence, I saw after I wrote this post that Mr. Gantos's latest book, Dead End in Norvelt, releases in hardcover today.** I will be buying that soon!


*Jack's New Power and Desire Lines
**A little synchronicity report for Artist's Way lovers.

Working Through THE ARTIST'S WAY

Some of you know that one of the classes formerly on deck for EFA's fall schedule was based on Julia Cameron's well-known creativity program-in-book-form The Artist's Way. It was supposed to start this week, but I had to cancel it Friday due to low registration. (And by "low registration," I mean NO registration. It happens!)

I had planned to take this course. After canceling, I looked into the instructor's other classes. Her workshops get RAVES. But the class times just weren't right for me.

So guess what. I've decided to work through the program on my own. Starting . . . before now . . . here is the plan.

• I'll study one book chapter each week. (Did that on Sunday.)
• I'll write daily morning pages — that's 3 pages of longhand stream-of-consciousness writing, first thing every day. (So far, so good.)
• And I'll take myself on a weekly artist date — that's a solo activity of my choosing meant to feed my creative side. (I've got something BIG brewing to kick things off.)

Also, I'll track my thoughts 'n' progress on the blog. As I feel like it.

Wanna follow along . . . or cheer me on . . . or tell me about your own AW experience? Leave a comment here at the blog to let me know you're out there!

Meanwhile, I've got some work to do so I can justify slipping away for my date tomorrow night.