The Artist's Way (22 page)

First of all, take a look at what jumps make your horse so skittish. You may find that certain obstacles are far more scary than others. An agent jump may frighten you more than a workshop jump. A review jump may be okay while a rewrite jump scares your talent to death. Remember that in a horse race, there are other horses in the field. One trick a seasoned jockey uses is to place a green horse in the slipstream of an older, steadier, and more seasoned horse. You can do this, too.

• Who do I know who has an agent? Then ask them how they got one.
  
• Who do I know who has done a successful rewrite? Ask them how to do one.
  
• Do I know anyone who has survived a savage review? Ask them what they did to heal themselves.
  

Once we admit the need for help, the help arrives. The ego always wants to claim self-sufficiency. It would rather pose as a creative loner than ask for help. Ask anyway.

Bob was a promising young director when he made his first documentary. It was a short, very powerful film about his father, a factory worker. When he had a rough cut together,
Bob showed it to a teacher, a once-gifted filmmaker who was blocked himself. The teacher savaged it. Bob abandoned the film. He stuck the film in some boxes, stuck the boxes in his basement, and forgot about them until the basement flooded. “Oh well. Just as well,” he told himself then, assuming the film was ruined.

I met Bob half a decade later. Sometime after we became friends, he told me the story of his film. I had a suspicion that it was good. “It's lost,” he told me. “Even the lab lost the footage I gave them.” Talking about the film, Bob broke down—and through. He began to mourn his abandoned dream.

A week later, Bob got a call from the lab. “It's incredible. They found the footage,” he related. I was not too surprised. I believe the creator keeps an eye on artists and was protecting that film. With the encouragement of his screenwriter girlfriend, now his wife, Bob finished his film. They have gone on to make a second, innovative documentary together.

Faced with a creative U-turn, ask yourself, “Who can I ask for help about this U-turn?” Then start asking.

In order to work freely on a project, an artist must be at least functionally free of resentment (anger) and resistance (fear). What do we mean by that? We mean that any buried barriers must be aired before the work can proceed. The same holds true for any buried payoffs to not working. Blocks are seldom mysterious. They are, instead, recognizable artistic defenses against what is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a hostile environment.

Remember, your artist is a creative child. It sulks, throws tantrums, holds grudges, harbors irrational fears. Like most children, it is afraid of the dark, the bogeyman, and any adventure that isn't safely scary. As your artist's parent and guardian, its big brother, warrior, and companion, it falls to you to convince your artist it is safe to come out and (work) play.

Beginning any new project, it's a good idea to ask your artist a few simple questions. These questions will help remove
common bugaboos standing between your artist and the work. These same questions, asked when work grows difficult or bogs down, usually act to clear the obstructed flow.

A word of warning: this is a very powerful exercise; it can do fatal damage to a creative block.

TASKS

CHECK-IN 

C
REATIVITY IS
G
OD ENERGY
flowing through us, shaped by us, like light flowing through a crystal prism. When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain. When we resist what that energy might show us or where it might take us, we often experience a shaky, out-of-control feeling. We want to shut down the flow and regain our sense of control. We slam on the psychic brakes.

Every creative person has myriad ways to block creativity. Each of us favors one or two ways particularly toxic to us because they block us so effectively.

For some people, food is a creativity issue. Eating sugar or fats or certain carbohydrates may leave them feeling dulled, hung over, unable to focus—blurry. They use food to block energy and change. As the shaky feeling comes over them that
they are going too fast and God knows where, that they are about to fly apart, these people reach for food. A big bowl of ice cream, an evening of junk food, and their system clogs: What was I thinking? What …? Oh, never mind….

For some people alcohol is the favored block. For others, drugs. For many, work is the block of choice. Busy, busy, busy, they grab for tasks to numb themselves with. They can't take a half hour's walk. “What a waste of time!” Must-dos and multiple projects are drawn to them like flies to a soda can in the sun. They go, “Buzz, buzz, buzz,
swat!
”
as they brush aside the stray thought that was the breakthrough insight.

For others, an obsession with painful love places creative choice outside their hands. Reaching for the painful thought, they become instant victims rather than feel their own considerable power. “If only he or she would just love me …”

This obsessive thought drowns out the little voice that suggests rearranging the living room, taking a pottery class, trying a new top on that story that's stymied. The minute a creative thought raises its head, it is lopped off by the obsession, which blocks fear and prevents risk. Going out dancing? Redoing the whole play with an inner-city theme? “If only he or she would love me …” So much for
West
Side
Story.

Sex is the great block for many. A mesmerizing, titillating hypnotic interest slides novel erotic possibilities in front of the real novel. The new sex object becomes the focus for creative approaches.

Now, note carefully that food, work, and sex are all good in themselves. It is the
abuse
of them that makes them creativity issues. Knowing yourself as an artist means acknowledging which of these you abuse when you want to block yourself. If creativity is like a burst of the universe's breath through the straw that is each of us, we pinch that straw whenever we pick up one of our blocks. We shut down our flow. And we do it on purpose.

We begin to sense our real potential and the wide range of possibilities open to us. That scares us. So we all reach for blocks to slow our growth. If we are honest with ourselves, we all know which blocks are the toxic ones for us. Clue: this is the block we defend as our right.

Line up the possibilities. Which one makes you angry to even think about giving up? That explosive one is the one that has caused you the most derailment. Examine it. When asked to name our poison, most of us can. Has food sabotaged me? Has workaholism sabotaged me? Has sex or love obsession blocked my creativity?

Mix and match is a common recipe for using blocks: use one, add another, mix in a third, wear yourself out. The object of all of this blocking is to alleviate fear. We turn to our drug of choice to block our creativity whenever we experience the anxiety of our inner emptiness. It is always fear—often disguised but
always
there—that leads us into grabbing for a block.

Usually, we experience the choice to block as a coincidence. She happened to call … I felt hungry and there was some ice cream … He dropped by with some killer dope…. The choice to block always works in the short run and fails in the long run.

The choice to block is a creative U-turn. We turn back on ourselves. Like water forced to a standstill, we turn stagnant. The self-honesty lurking in us all always knows when we choose against our greater good. It marks a little jot on our spiritual blackboard: “Did it again.”

It takes grace and courage to admit and surrender our blocking devices. Who wants to? Not while they are still working! Of course, long after they have stopped working, we hope against hope that this time they will work again.

Blocking is essentially an issue of faith. Rather than trust our intuition, our talent, our skill, our desire, we fear where our creator is taking us with this creativity. Rather than paint, write, dance, audition, and see where it takes us, we pick up a block. Blocked, we know who and what we are: unhappy people. Unblocked, we may be something much more threatening—happy. For most of us, happy is terrifying, unfamiliar, out of control, too risky! Is it any wonder we take temporary U-turns?

As we become aware of our blocking devices—food, busyness, alcohol, sex, other drugs—we can feel our U-turns as we make them. The blocks will no longer work effectively. Over time, we will try—perhaps slowly at first and erratically—to
ride out the anxiety and see where we emerge. Anxiety is fuel. We can use it to write with, paint with, work with.

Workaholism is an addiction, and like all addictions, it blocks creative energy. In fact, it could be argued that the desire to block the fierce flow of creative energy is an underlying reason for addiction. If people are too busy to write morning pages, or too busy to take an artist date, they are probably too busy to hear the voice of authentic creative urges. To return to the concept of a radio set, the workaholic jams the signals with self-induced static.

Only recently recognized as an addiction, workaholism still receives a great deal of support in our society. The phrase
I'm
working
has a certain unassailable air of goodness and duty to it. The truth is, we are very often working to avoid ourselves, our spouses, our real feelings.

In creative recovery, it is far easier to get people to do the extra work of the morning pages than it is to get them to do the assigned play of an artist date. Play can make a workaholic very nervous. Fun is scary.

“If I had more time, I'd have more fun,” we like to tell ourselves, but this is seldom the truth. To test the validity of this assertion, ask yourself how much time you allot each week to fun: pure, unadulterated, nonproductive fun?

For most blocked creatives, fun is something they avoid almost as assiduously as their creativity. Why? Fun leads to creativity. It leads to rebellion. It leads to feeling our own power, and that is scary. “I may have a small problem with overwork,” we like to tell ourselves, “but I am not really a workaholic.” Try answering these questions before you are so sure:

In order to recover our creativity, we must learn to see workaholism as a block instead of a building block. Work abuse creates in our artist a Cinderella Complex. We are always dreaming of the ball and always experiencing the ball and chain.

There is a difference between zestful work toward a cherished goal and workaholism. That difference lies less in the hours than it does in the emotional quality of the hours spent. There is a treadmill quality to workaholism. We depend on our addiction and we resent it. For a workaholic, work is synonymous with worth, and so we are hesitant to jettison any part of it.

In striving to clear the way for our creative flow, we must look at our work habits very clearly. We may not think we overwork until we look at the hours we put in. We may think our work is normal until we compare it with a normal forty-hour week.

One way to achieve clarity about our time expenditures is to keep a daily checklist and record of our time spent. Even an hour of creative work/play can go a long way toward offsetting the sense of workaholic desperation that keeps our dreams at bay.

Because workaholism is a process addiction (an addiction to a behavior rather than a substance), it is difficult to tell when we are indulging in it. An alcoholic gets sober by abstaining from alcohol. A workaholic gets sober by abstaining from
over
work. The trick is to define overwork—and this is where
we often lie to ourselves, bargaining to hold on to those abusive behaviors that still serve us.

In order to guard against rationalization, it is very useful to set a
bottom
line.
Each person's bottom line is different but should specifically mention those behaviors known to be off-limits. These specific behaviors make for more immediate recovery than a vague, generic resolve to do better.

If you really have no time, you need to make some room. It is more likely, however, that you have the time and are misspending it. Your time log will help you find those areas where you need to create boundaries.
Boundary
is another way to say bottom line.) “Bottom line, I will not ___________.” That is your boundary. See Setting a Bottom Line in this week's list of tasks.)

As with creative U-turns, recovery from workaholism may require that we enlist the help of our friends. Tell them what you are trying to accomplish. Ask them to remind you gently when you have strayed off your self-care course. (This will backfire if you enlist the help of people who are active workaholics themselves or who are so controlling that they will overcontrol you.) Bear in mind, however, that this is
your
problem. No one can police you into recovery. But in some parts of the country Workaholics Anonymous meetings are springing up, and these may help you enormously.

One very simple but effective way to check your own recovery progress is to post a sign in your work area. Also post this sign wherever you will read it: one on the bathroom mirror and one on the refrigerator, one on the nightstand, one in the car…. The sign reads:
WORKAHOLISM IS A BLOCK, NOT A
BUILDING BLOCK.

In any creative life there are dry seasons. These droughts appear from nowhere and stretch to the horizon like a Death Valley vista. Life loses its sweetness; our work feels mechanical, empty, forced. We feel we have nothing to say, and we are tempted to say nothing. These are the times when the morning pages are most difficult and most valuable.