The Artist's Way

For anyone who is interested, here are the tasks for week one, in short hand.

1. Every morning, set your clock a half-hour early; get up and write 3 pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing. Do not reread these pages or allow anyone else to read them. (This won't make much sense unless you read the background to the morning pages, which is long and I'm not going to write it here. Suffice to say, just write. Not stories or anything detailed, just go straight from brain to hand.)
2. Take yourself on an artist's date.
3: Time-travel: list three old enemies of your creative self-worth. Be as specific as possible. This is your monster hall of fame.
4. Time travel: Select and write about one horror story from your monster hall of fame.
5. Write a letter to the censor in your defense. It is great fun to write this letter in the voice of your wounded artist child. "To whom it may concern, Sister Ann Rita is a jerk and has pig eyes and I can too spell!"
6. Time travel: List three old champions of your creative self worth.
7. Time travel: Select and write out one happy piece of encouragement. Write a thank-you letter. Mail it to yourself or to the long-lost mentor.
8. Imaginary lives: If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? Whatever occurs to you, jot it down. Do not overthink this exercise. The point of these lives is to have fun in them., more fun than you might be having in this one. Look over your list and select one. Then do it this week. For instance, if you put down country singer, can you pick a guitar? If you dream of being a cowhand, how about some horseback riding?
9. In working with affirmations and blurts (note: blurts are what your censor says to make you feel bad) very often injuries and monsters swim back to us. Add these to your list. Work with each blurt individually. Turn each negative blurt into a positive affirmation.
10. Take your srtist for a walk, just the two of you. A brisk 20-minute walk can dramatically alter consciousness.

Hmm, busy week ahead.

/Red out.