Stuart Aken: The Artist's Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self

Occasionally, the words won’t come. Not because there’s nothing I want to write about, but because there’s too much. I have lists of topics I intend to use to engage my readers here on the blog, for example. But sometimes I find myself overwhelmed by the sheer variety of things that interest me. What doesn’t help is that I’ve suffered from ME for the past ten years; one of the features of this debilitating condition is its effect on the brain, causing perceptual and short-term memory problems. It’s largely a neurological condition, distorting the control function of the hypothalamus. I thought I’d defeated it until a couple of weeks ago, when it returned with a vengeance. Took me a while to figure out that I’d been neglecting to take my regular rests after activity. So, it appears, I’m likely to have to deal with this for the rest of my life. I mean, if it hasn’t gone after ten years, it seems unlikely it will completely disappear.

I find that time spent on holiday in sunny climes has a fantastically beneficial effect on my health. I asked the doctor if I could go and live in the Mediterranean on the National Health Service, but she thought it unlikely! Still, my next sortie overseas will probably have a positive effect and I should return more energised, I hope. Roll on the hols, eh?

But, enough of my personal problems.

I know that a lot of writers experience difficulty in starting to write, others have problems continuing and many have difficulty with actually finishing a piece. There are probably as many reasons for these problems as there are writers, so I’m not about to start pontificating on what you should do and how you should deal with your problem, whatever it is. For one thing, I rarely have these issues, so I have little first hand experience.

(At present, my own problem is that the ME is preventing me writing as smoothly as I do normally because it keeps misdirecting my fingers on the keyboard so that I have to correct a typo for every few words I’m typing - bit of a bugger, but hardly a serious issue.)

What I can do for those of you who have problems with starting, continuing or finishing is point you in possible directions where you just might come across a ‘cure’ it that’s not too strong a word for it.

First, two books that I consider absolutely essential to any writer:

Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer ; this is essentially a guide to the way you should set about becoming a writer. It consists of advice and exercises. The exercises are an essential part of the process. I strongly urge anyone who suffers from any form of writer’s block, at any stage in their writing career, to read this book and do the exercises. They really are life-changing. But you must be prepared to put in the work. It certainly worked for me. I now see I’ve never reviewed this book, an omission I will correct very soon!

Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way ; subtitled, A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self , is a manual for finding the creative drives in your life. Again, there are exercises and, again, I urge that readers who wish to fully engage with their writing do these exercises.

I reviewed this book a while back and you can read that review here: http://stuartaken.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-artists-way-by-julia-cameron.html#.UFGr9I0iaSo

And, finally, for this piece, a few words of suggestions that might help you over those barriers.

Can’t get started?

Try simply writing down anything and everything that comes to you as you sit in front of that piece of blank paper or white screen. Literally everything. So, if your thoughts are, ‘I can’t think of anything…’ write it down. Often, the simple fact of having words on the blank sheet will unlock the gate and allow others to flood out. At this stage, it’s best not to review your writing but allow the flow to continue until you reach the end. You can always edit afterwards, and it might just get those creative juices flowing.

Can’t continue?

Try writing something else, something completely different from the story or book that’s causing the struggle. If the worst comes to the worst, copy something from another piece and develop that instead. The subconscious mind sometimes needs this sort of trick to kick it back into the groove you were previously ploughing (if you’ll forgive the tortured metaphor).

Can’t finish?

As with the first suggestion, just write whatever comes into your head, with no concern for errors, content or grammar. Sometimes we get obsessed by our need to get it right and this simply prevents us from getting it down. I repeat, you can always edit later. The creating and editing processes involve different parts of the brain and these two aspects of our make-up are often in conflict. By trying to edit as you go along, you’re actually denying your creative self the freedom it needs to work imaginatively.

Try it. What have you to lose? Don’t tell me it’s a waste of time: you were already wasting time sitting unproductively in front of that blank screen/sheet of paper, weren’t you?

Good luck with your writing, folks, and let me have your thoughts in the form of comments.

Cover of "The Artist's Way: A Course in D...

Cover via Amazon

The following piece was written in a single session, using techniques taken from Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer and Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. The modern tendency toward scepticism will prevent many believing that I present this piece exactly as it was first written. Nevertheless, that’s the case. I haven’t edited the piece in any way. It remains precisely as it came from the ends of my fingers. I don’t present this to illustrate anything other than the assertion that it’s possible to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper with no idea what you want to write and come up with something that is, at least, a basis for some better, more polished and edited piece. It was started to get my own creative juices going. That it turned into this illustration is a combination of good fortune and my determination not to allow the inner policeman to place barriers in my way whilst creating.

I have subsequently read through the piece, but I’ve made no alterations at all. None. If you have ever suffered from any form of writer’s block, I urge you to read on. It shows, demonstrates, the reality of the process of enabling your inner artist. Oh, and by the way, I note that at one stage it says it took about twenty minutes. That was a guestimate, written at that point in the piece. It actually took forty six minutes in total. I know this because I’m currently keeping a time chart of my activities so I know how I really spend my time.

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Sometimes it’s necessary simply to place words on paper, with no knowledge of where they will take you. Being blocked, lacking ideas, is often no more than a failure to be brave. That blank page can become a barrier. Filling it with words, no matter what they say, can break that barrier and set off the writer on a journey of adventure, romance, fantasy, or whatever direction the subconscious decides to take you.

The point is not to be afraid, not to allow the unknown to govern your creativity. Allow that inner creative voice its head, give it freedom. Ignore all the rules and laws and advice about sentence structure, planning and genre. This is a way to free your spirit and allow the creative artist inside you to soar.

Sometimes, faced with such a blank space, you will indulge in utter rubbish for a while. The words will mean nothing, even when you look at them later, and especially as you place them in lines on the page. But that isn’t important. The very act of writing results in more writing. If you’re a writer, if you’re an artist, a creator, the ideas will eventually come to you. They’ll sneak up when you’re not looking and suddenly you’ll have the germ of a story. I don’t know how this will work for everyone, I only know that it does work in varying degrees for all those who have any creative urge.

For me, it’s possible to sit down at the keyboard with absolutely no preconceived ideas, no knowledge of a character, no story thread, and end up with a short story at a single sitting./ Sometimes, I need longer, more sessions, but I frequently end up with a story at the end of the process. The important thing is not to think about what you’re writing, not to allow the search for the right word to get in the way. If this means that you put down the same word seventeen times in a row, it’s not important. The exercise is about getting over that block that’s preventing you from creating. Ignore grammar, spelling, syntax and appropriate language. If expletives come to you use them, or, more accurately, allow them space on the page. You can always remove them when you go back to do your edit.

And that’s the real point here. What you’re doing is allowing the creative side of your brain to play without that irritatingly perfectionist editing policeman to look over your shoulder with his corrections and insistence on proper sentence formation. If you seek perfection at the moment of creativity, you’ll never create a thing. Do you suppose Michelangelo produced his works without error, Did Da Vinci make no mistakes along the path to genius? Were Shakespeare’s first drafts the works you now see performed on stage and screen the world over? Of course not. You see the finished article, the polished piece, from all published artists. What you don’t see is the stumbles and wrong paths, the mistakes and glaring errors of grammar they made along the route to that brilliant perfect work. If you insist on comparing your fledgling work with the final output of an accomplished master, you’ll always be poor by comparison. Wait until you’ve finished the piece before you start to make comparisons, if you must.

This piece started off as an exercise to write a new story. Seriously, that is what I had in mind when I sat at the keyboard. That it turned into this piece is simply an illustration of my point. That allowing your creative self to take ascendency will eventually produce a piece of written work with some value. It may need some work; it may need completely re-writing. It may be no more than the germ of a story that you can later turn into the work you envisaged at the start. But it will be a piece of writing that has carried you over the block. It’s because I’ve used this technique almost all my writing life that I’ve never actually suffered writer’s block. There have been odd times when I’ve turned out something like this rather than a piece of fiction, but I’ve always been able to place words on paper.

It’s about taking the plunge, being brave. It’s about ignoring that ingrained school lesson that everything must be right. It’s about trusting your inner artist. As Julia Cameron says in The Artist’s Way, you need to treat your inner artist as a child. Allow it to play. Give it the freedom to make mistakes, we learn from such mistakes. And, in the end, when it comes to writing, what has been lost if you produce a page that’s mostly gobbledegook? A few moments of your time? Nothing more. But the gains that are possible form such an exercise are enormous.

I set out with a blank sheet this morning. These words, exactly as they are now, took me about twenty minutes to write. But only because I deliberately refused to allow my inner policeman to interfere as I produced the idea. Of course, I did correct the odd typo as I went along, but I’ve been doing this for years. If it’s your first time, I suggest you avoid even looking at the screen or the piece of paper, if you’re writing by hand. That way you have no reason to backtrack. I have the excuse that, as time went past, I realised I had a piece for my blog. But, I want to be as honest as convention permits. So, I’m making the decision now not to edit this piece, but to publish it as it came from my finger ends. If I can do this, knowing that it will be read by many people, surely you can do it, knowing you can go back at a later date and make your words perfect, correct any syntactical or grammatical errors, remove any repetitions.

So, that’s my challenge to you. Start off your day with that blank sheet of paper and just write those words that flow, regardless of order, grammar, syntax, spelling or even sense. These are words to get your creative spirit out into the open. Consider them the same as those first strokes of preparation painters make on their blank canvass. But remember that, for most painters, they have the advantage of a subject actually before them. You, as a writer, may have no more than the accumulated experience of your lifetime and the words you’ve read from others. By allowing your inner artist to overcome the inner policeman, you might just turn out the foundation of a piece that you can turn into that work of genius.

So. There you have it. I’ve probably repeated myself, used inappropriate words, missed out words here and there. But, truthfully, this piece has not been edited. It would be worthless if I’d done that. It is, after all, intended as an illustration of what can be achieved by getting that damned policeman off your shoulder and letting your artist out to play.

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