Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!
Horace
Morning Pages
One of the exercises in my Artist’s Way catch-up was to read back through my morning pages. Of course, the book is set up as a 12 week course, so they’re expecting you to have about eight or nine weeks’ worth at this point.
I first started doing morning pages a year ago, but fairly patchily. Despite the patchiness, it took me a few sessions to read through them all.
I kept having trouble finding my page as it turns out I repeated myself. A lot. Probably the most commonly recurring themes were complaining tiredness, grumping about the DDJ and wondering if it was all worthwhile.
Tiredness was more or less a given – as I mentioned at the start of the year, getting up early is a sacrifice. I like my sleep, and I’m not one of these people who can get by on just a few hours a night. Or eight hours, if it comes to that. Nine is a nice round number. (Well, it isn’t, but it’s square, which is just as good.)
The dear old Dreaded Day Job was the leading cause of prayers in the morning pages – mostly along the lines of the classic prayer Dear God Get Me Out Of Here – and most of the grumbles as well.
I recorded us first seriously considering the possibility of me going down to four days in – wait for it – November 2012. It took nine months for that dream to come true, nine months of intermittent anguish and desperation.
Nine months! I could have made an entire person in that amount of time. Perhaps from another point of view I did – I made (or allowed myself to be made) a person who could cope with dreams deferred. Not happily, to be sure, but cope.
Or possibly this is a retrospective opinion. Ask me to give up my Mondays and See What Happens To You.
The gnarliest question of all, however, is Is It Worthwhile? How do the sacrifices and gains weigh up?
Nine months on, I find the sacrifice of sleep has been worth the development in my writing life that has eventuated – and training myself to be able to keep making that sacrifice with no short-term gain was invaluable.
That said, I don’t intend to keep writing morning pages, except when I have a lot of stuff sloshing about in my head and need to get it down on the paper where I can see it clearly. But I do intend to keep giving up that half hour of sleep.
Because the fire doesn’t fall if there’s nothing on the altar.
The Artist's Way: A Sense of Catching Up
Covering July: a Sense of Connection, August: a Sense of Strength, and September: a Sense of Compassion.
Lightly covering – a crisp linen sheet, say, rather than a fat and puffy quilt.
July revealed such gems as “I believe I am getting better at socks” (knitting them, not the Pratchett kind) and “I feel more possible” (although the Caped Gooseberry assures me I am not only possible, but actual – I think my meaning may have escaped him).
Also “As a kid, we never had enough: books” (whether you can have enough books is debatable; our perceived lack drove me to read encyclopaedias and Agatha Christie at the age of six, so it’s not all bad).
August asked me to complete this sentence: In a perfect world I would secretly love to be a…
All right, there’s not much secret about it, but I want to be a full-time writer.
In five years’ time, I’d like to be writing full time with one novel published and two plays produced.
What can I do now to help make that happen?
Write hard on Mondays. Make the most of morning spaces. Get to bed on time.
I was also invited to select a role model. The three women who sprang to mind are not only among my favourite writers (international women of mystery) but are also all three writers who balanced novels and the theatre in some way or another: Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers.
The one woman who sprang to mind whom I most certainly do not wish to take for my pattern is P.D. James – at least having a DDJ until reaching retirement age. In the areas of literary achievement, faith and perseverance (not to mention the life peerage) I’d be most happy to follow her example.
Also, if I was a colour, I’d be russet: colour of earth and blood, rich cloth and poor, and the bindings of old books. The colour of autumn leaves, the colour of rust.
September brought an insight – I should stop calling myself lazy. I wrote “you may be scared, self-doubting and self-flagellating, feeling tired, heartsick and guilty – but you are not lazy.”
Procrastination isn’t the result of laziness, Cameron says. It’s the result of fear. “Fear is what blocks an artist. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of not finishing. The fear of failure and of success. The fear of beginning at all.” (p.152)
Another insight: “Over any extended period of time, being an artist requires enthusiasm more than discipline. Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment…” (p.153).
Much like marriage: you can’t stay in the same emotional state for 50 years, you need commitment. But commitment shouldn’t be replaced by discipline (hug two three! kiss two three!) because discipline isn’t rooted in love – except perhaps in love with how wonderfully disciplined we are!
The trick is to find our enthusiasm for the task at hand – and how to find it quickly in the pre-dawn dark when getting out of the nice warm bed seems like a particularly sadistic rebirthing technique.
As always, your wisdom welcomed! Or witty folly (better a witty fool than a foolish wit) – we’re not fussy here!
Sinistra Inksteyne