'The Artist's Way' Weeks 9-12

It’s Part 3 of my summer project, which is completing ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron. In this episode I debrief on Weeks 9-12 and speak about:

Week 9 | Compassion

  • Procrastination and discovering your particular brand of procrastination.

  • Overcoming procrastination requires self-compassion more than it does self-criticism.

  • Enthusiasm and discipline in long term projects.

Week 10 | Self-protection 

  • Getting honest about the things we use to distract and disrupt ourselves when we write.

  • Glorifying busyness and productivity is detrimental at the start of a new project when in fact we need more white space.

  • Boundaries and setting bare minimums.

Week 11 | Autonomy

  • Taking responsibility for our art, our point of view as an artist and our creative process.

  • Why it’s not helpful to look outside of ourselves for what we ‘should’ be writing, how we ‘should’ be structuring our writing sessions, what our artistic life ‘should’ look like… 

  • Planning artist dates with ourselves.

Week 12 | Faith

  • Being willing to be optimistic in a culture and industry that can be cynical.

  • Accepting mystery and what’s unknowable in the early stages of a creative project.

  • Getting comfortable sitting in the dark with an idea while it takes root.

Next month I’ll be back to speaking about craft as a new project unfolds…

Thank you for listening. You can learn more about me on my about page or say hi and ask me a question via @emilysheehan__ on Instagram.