In the moment of creation, we are ageless. We feel both young at heart and old and wise. “Artists work until the end,” my photographer friend Robert said to me yesterday. Yes, they do. This is why retirement from one career— even if it is our major career— is not, by any means, “the end.” […]
The Wish to be Original
The root of the word “original” is origin. We are the origin of our work. It is the ego’s demand that our work be totally original-— as if such a thing were possible. All work is influenced by other work. All people are influenced by other people. No man is an island and no piece […]
Enthusiasm over Discipline
“It must take so much discipline to be an artist,” we are often told by well-meaning people who are not artists but wish they were. What a temptation. What a seduction. They’re inviting us to preen before an admiring audience, to act out the image that is so heroic and Spartan– and false. As artists, […]
It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again
Twenty-five years ago I wrote a book on creativity called The Artist’s Way. It spelled out, in a step-by-step fashion, just what a person could do to recover— and exercise— their creativity. I often called that book “The Bridge” because it allowed people to move from the shore of their constrictions and fears to the […]
Risk: Leap and [then] the net will appear
I belive in risk. I don’t believe in luck. I do believe in synchronicity. You may call this semantic quibbling, but I don’t think so. Luck is something that happens to us. Synchronicity is something that begins in our consciousness. Risk is something we undertake. Luck is passive. We trigger synchronicity. We trigger it through […]
Finish Something
As artists, we often complain about our inability to begin. If only I had the nerve to start X– a novel, a short story, the rewrite on our play, the photo series we’re “thinking” of. I would like to suggest that you start somewhere else– start with finishing something. There must be some obscure law […]
The Magic of Artist Dates
My students understand “working” on their Morning Pages– after all, this is America, and we have a powerful work ethic. But the very same students who studiously apply themselves to writing their three pages a day often find themselves balking at my assignment of an Artist Date. And yet, an Artist Date is what fills […]
Beating the Blues
I believe that what is really painful is not practicing our creativity. It, to me, smacks of unrequited love: the wishing, the yearning, and the inability to engage. A great way to experiment with this is the next time “the blues” strike, try making something. Anything. A pot of chili, a cabinet, a wild paint […]
Accepting Ourselves… and our true delights
Sometimes as artists, we practice a self-loathing aesthetic that is like what adolescents do in terms of their physicality. This is a self-loathing that sets in and says whatever we are, it is not as good or as beautiful as whatever it is the other one has. If we are small, dark and exotic, we […]
Persistence
Faith is a commodity we always feel is lacking. Who among us feels he has “enough” faith? And yet, we all do. It takes faith to establish an atmosphere where our creativity can flourish. Take pen in hand and list five occasions in which you have demonstrated persistence. For example: 1. I went back to […]
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