The Sound of Paper

[pegkerr]

kijjohnson gave me Julie Cameron's The Sound of Paper for my birthday. It seems to be a book about regenerating the creative process if you've been blocked, and god knows, that is up my alley. I started reading it and did the first exercise tonight.

I have mixed feelings about Julie Cameron. I read The Artist's Way and there were parts of that book that really spoke to me. But I cannot get her conception of the morning pages to work for me. (Write three pages longhand every morning, before you get out of bed, about anything, no matter what). She swears that it will Unlock the Font of Creativity within you. I tried, I really did. I did them religiously for months. But as you'll remember, I've been doing a daily journal every night (one page) for going on thirty years. Three pages in the morning seemed redundant (especially since I was doing LiveJournal, too), and I didn't have time. And I couldn't understand what was so magical about them, when I've been doing practically the same thing at night. I wasn't getting the Magical Unlocking of Your Creativity that she swore would happen, and I kept wondering "What's wrong with me?"

Finally, it occurred to me that I had written two perfectly good novels that sold without doing morning pages. (Well, duh.) I stopped doing them immediately and have never resumed, although I still do the night (paper) journal and LiveJournal. I don't miss the morning pages, and it was a relief to cut one other source of guilt out of my life. However, I still remain blocked.

I like her idea of the artist date, though, and I did really like some of the exercises in The Artist's Way. I really must scan the collage I made and post it. She suggested taking pictures and phrases from magazines and pasting them on a page for about an hour. I really got into it and worked on it for about a week. I liked the result so much that I laminated it when I was through. I'm really quite proud of it, and it's still up where I can see it in my office.

So anyway, I'll read and try the exercises in this new book, and try to be open and hopeful.

But no morning pages, dammit.

Comments

[aome.livejournal.com]

Write three pages longhand every morning, before you get out of bed, about anything, no matter what

This reminds me of an exercise one of my high school English teachers had us do one semester. The first 10 minutes were spent writing as much as we possibly could (longhand, of course), about anything that came to mind. I can only assume it was for a similar purpose. He'd put a phrase, question or keyword on the board at the start of each period, and we could (but weren't obliged to) use it as a jumping off point. I stumbled across that notebook a few years back, and what was immediately noticeable was that I was using that time to write things like "I wonder how much time is left?" and "This is stupid" and "Hmm, what can I say about today's keyword?" and minor things about the day. Very amusing in retrospect, but hardly profound, nor did it have any impact that I could see on my creativity or ability to write something else. Now, granted, that was a time limit, not a page limit, and we were encouraged to write constantly in that time, not sit and think a lot, but still - I can see how the forced "write about anything" time doesn't work for everyone.

A more helpful bit of advice for specific writing projects came from heinous_bitca, who suggested that if I was struggling with a story, to write at least three sentences every day for it, even if they sucked. Something about how, once you get three sentences in, your brain often writes one more, and one more, and soon you have two paragraphs. Sometimes I got more and sometimes it was only the three sentences, but at least it was forward progress of some sort.

[cheshyre]

Did you guys see yesterday's Dilbert?

[aome.livejournal.com]

*laughs* No, I didn't. Our paper recently moved Dilbert to the Business section, which I tend not to read on Mondays (no fund updates). Thanks for pointing it out.