Chapter One of The Artist’s Way deals with “Recovering a Sense of Safety”.
One of the concepts Cameron introduces – or perhaps, more aptly, puts a name to – is the Censor. This is the voice in your head that tells you you’re a no-good talentless hack and it would be best for the literate world if you gave up right now and never strung two words together again.
Or something like that.
For some people, that voice belongs to a particular person in their past – or, God help them, their present – who is continually running them down and pissing on their dreams.
For others of us, it’s just the voice we all have in our heads – not that little helpful one which tells you when you’re about to do something really stupid, the other one. The vitriolic one.
But it can still help to put a face to the foe. If you have any artistic ability, you can render one yourself; the rest of us have to go hunting for one.
And when I tried to put a face to my nasty little voice, this is approximately what I found:
Yup. That’s what the voice in my head looks like.
I don’t know what that says about me (any budding psycho*ists want to chip in?) but there it is.
It’s a good face to sneer back at (yes! we sneer in the face of destructive criticism!) but for some reason the person who had this face doesn’t seem attached to it in my mind. No ‘oh yes, and where’s your loyal populace then?’ retorts seem pertinent (although they could definitely be construed as impertinent).
The fruity dress sense? Well, that’s a different kettle of medals.
To be honest, I have still to work through all of the 10 exercises attached to the chapter. This time I think I’ll have a stab at some of the ones I didn’t try first time round.
I have til Thursday before I run out of month.
But I’m not weaselling.
Promise.