Coincidentally, this chapter was "Nourishing you and your creative dreams" which is really very apt at the moment when I’m trying to get over the end of a month’s worth of illness and putting pressure on myself to try to get the Satie arrangement done by a week ago.
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This one was about creative support – who supports you, how you can support yourself, what sort of support you actually need. Interesting stuff, but I think I need to re-read it. Support has always been a difficult issue for me. Not because nobody’s believed in me, but because I haven’t always received support in the way I’ve needed it and I find it hard to ask. I also do often end up being other people’s support and not giving myself the support I need to achieve what I want. I know it’s only been a few days since reading the micromovements chapter, but I did mostly read that one a while back and have been using micromovements with a fair bit of success for several weeks now. That technique’s definitely a keeper!
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This chapter’s on “micromovements”, a system of small steps – rather than having a big plan that never gets achieved, the idea is to break it down into small achievable steps that just take a few minutes. It’s a sensible plan, and one I’ve been following for a while now. The little steps don’t always get done, but it’s certainly a good deal easier to think about doing them when you know they won’t take long.
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I’ve been increasingly preoccupied with trying to work out how to continue composing while I’m on a contract, without either neglecting my commitment to my employers or doing without sleep or living with permanent neck and shoulder pain, and have yet to come up with a good answer, so this evening I posted a question on the spnm forum asking people who work full-time how they maintain their composing activity or, if they’re not working full-time, what option are they taking instead and how is that working out for them. It’ll be interesting to see the answers (if any). Hope I do get one or two…
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… entitled ‘The Land of No’. I’m finding this book very helpful actually. Some of the ideas are very similar to Julia Cameron’s (I guess there’s a limited number of concepts about what holds one back from doing what one really wants to do) but the way she expresses them is very effective.
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And had a good think about some stuff which I think will turn out to be helpful. In particular, thinking about the things that are good about my current situation and what’s bad and what I can do to fix up the bad stuff. I think I’ve come up with a bit of a sort-of plan, which is an excellent start.
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I finished reading Julia Cameron’s Walking in this World a couple of weeks back, but was feeling the need for the sort of continued encouragement I’ve been getting from her books, so I asked a friend for a recommendation and on her advice ordered a copy of SARK’s Make Your Creative Dreams Real. I’ve only read the introduction, but her approach, while visually a bit girly, seems to be quite sensible and positive. And I like her attitude: "I give permission for creative dreamers to do more resting, lying down and napping, all of which benefits creative dreams". Any book which advocates naps has to be OK, doesn’t it?
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So it’s all done now. But I think I still need something to keep me going, so I might quiz Tchatchke on what books by other authors she would recommend. Overall, WITW has been good, and pretty much just what I was looking for, although not nearly so well written as The Artist’s Way. Sometime I might try The Vein of Gold, but not yet. I think I would benefit from somebody else’s perspective next. I’d go back to Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, only there’s no time to do the exercises at present. Maybe in October…
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