Category: Creative Breakthroughs

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Creative Breakthroughs For Writers: News, Workshops, Tips, Advice thoughts on writing

The Artist’s Way, LIVE

Do you ever wonder if your life could be different, or feel like there’s more you still want to experience, but you’re not sure where to start?

Millions of people around the world (including me) have followed Julia Cameron’s ‘spiritual path to higher creativity’ and felt the change. Get the most out of this course by sharing the journey with others, celebrating, laughing, commiserating, and uplifting. As Cameron says in her book, artists rise together.

The Artist’s Way changed my life.

Firstly, let me be clear:

  • You don’t have to be an artist or creative of any kind to do this course.
  • You don’t have to have ANY special talents, training or skills to do this course.

This course is not about:

  • developing skills or talents of any kind.

This course is about:

  • fun, play, joy, experimentation, being brave, following your intuition, listening to yourself, being gentle, connecting with others (if you want to), feeling, honouring, being generous, and deepening self-care.

This course might be right for you if:

  • you’re burnt out from your job, career or just all the things in life
  • you’re working on a creative field but you feel like you’ve lost the joy
  • you’re feeling dispirited because the realities of pursuing your creative passion just keep getting squashed by time, money, and a culture that does not value and prioritise creativity
  • you’re feeling disconnected from people, and feeling lonely or isolated
  • you just don’t know what to do with yourself anymore.

(Ech… if this is you, I’m sorry, lovely. These are big feelings and ones that (I know) are difficult to deal with.)

This course might also be for you if:

  • you’d just like to find more fun and joy in a life that has become weighed down by the daily grind and awful news cycle.
  • you know you need more restorative practice in your life, but you can’t see even a tiny moment in the day or week to find it.

Trust me – this course is for you. Yes, you! 🙂

Have questions? Want to hear me chatter on about the many ways The Artist’s Way changed my life? Email me. hello@josephinemoon.com

Like most things in life, the best way to get the most out of this course is to join a cohort of fellow recovering creatives who will keep you motivated.

Over three months, The Artist’s Way (the bestselling book written by Julia Cameron) will lay out how to recover your creative birthright – even if you think you can’t do anything even remotely “artistic”. If that’s you, you’re not alone. Many people feel that way. But if you’ve ever watched small children (or puppies or kittens!), you’ll have noticed that one of our first instincts in life is to play. And that’s all that creativity is: play. Sadly, though, must of us have (temporarily) forgotten how to do it. That’s why we need The Artist’s Way.

Twenty years ago, I completed The Artist’s Way to recover my innate creativity. I met with a small group of people every Thursday evening and we shared what we’d done during the week – the struggles, the breakthroughs, and the camaraderie of shared experience. We also brought our posters and other various practical activities to ‘show and share’, which was tremendous fun. We wrote our morning pages and we went on artist’s dates. And during that time, I figured out how to be a writer and live as an artistic being.

Since the day I got a book contract, I’ve been telling anyone and everyone about The Artist’s Way. This is the book that made me a writer. Yet, it’s not a book about writing, it’s a book about creativity and right to have it, use it and enjoy it, whatever your passion or special interest might be, and whether or not it sells, is financially successful, or has an ‘important’ outcome of any kind.

Since then, I have opened the book to revise a section of The Artist’s Way every year that I’ve been writing professionally. It’s just that good.

Finally, I know it’s time for me to go back and do The Artist’s Way again and this time I want to share it with you too.

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Creative Breakthroughs For Writers: News, Workshops, Tips, Advice

Nurturing the Artist Child Within

Yesterday, I was chatting with my coach and our conversation turned (as it often does) to creativity. The maddening thing about creativity, for me, is that the more difficult life gets, the more I need to lean in to my creativity… and yet, my first reaction to stress is usually ‘freeze’… ‘hide’… or, ‘work harder’ (or eat cheese). Why do I find so many ways to self-sabotage myself? My logic tells me one thing but my adrenaline tells me something else. I should certainly know better by now because I do know better.

Let me diverge here for a moment, taking you all the way back to 26th January, 2013. I had a young baby, my first literary agent, and my first two-book deal. We were living ‘out in the sticks’ but had bought a property (a ‘renovator’s delight’) on the Sunshine Coast, and spent an excruciating amount of time on the road between the places, contstantly exhausted. Add in eight months of serious sleep deprivation, eight months of (late-diagnosed ) hyperemesis gravidarum before that… and a whole bunch of other stuff… and things were tough.

And right now? Life is tough, again, for so many reasons. So I went back through my old posts to see if I could find some wisdom, and came across this.

“This weekend, my inner child was horribly disappointed. We’d planned our first party for our eight-month-old baby — a ‘bush welcoming’ under the enormous fig trees on our new property for over forty people. I’d planned a time capsule, face painting, bubbles, rope swings in the trees, a barbecue, play equipment, icy poles and more. My sister had baked cupcakes with wee frog pictures on top and made lanterns for the trees. I’d ordered a helium balloon in the shape of a frog prince.

And then it rained. And rained, and rained and rained. Large parts of Queensland are flooded right now. Our new property (still a virtual construction site while we’re renovating) was running rivers of water and mud. We had to cancel. And I was somewhat heartbroken. Wondering why I was teary, it suddenly struck me that my inner child was heartbroken.

If you follow my writing, you’ll know how much I adore Julia Cameron’s wise words from her internationally bestselling book, The Artist’s Way. And you’ll know that her sage observation of we creative types is that our inner artist is a child, and to get the most out of our inner artist child we need to let her play. ‘Our artist child can best be enticed to work by treating work as play,’ she says (The Artist’s Way). Turning up to ‘work’ has ‘more to do with a child’s love of secret adventure than with ironclad discipline’.

The only compensation for an injured heart is to offer more love and fun.

So hubby and I packed up our lovely bubba man and drove to an even tinier town than ours (Moore) to visit an art show in the local hall with entry by gold donation. We wandered the many aisles marvelling at people’s creativity (the way someone could get so much expression into a tiger’s face, or the many uses of teabag tags), allowing our brains to stretch and grow while bubba man crawled and shuffled on the timber floor and tried to pull down the temporary display stands. Then we had ice cream. All while the rain drummed and drummed on the roof.

My inner artist was mollified. I’d had fun. I’d had a small adventure. I’d seen totally new things and thought of totally new ideas.

It’s what we must do as artists, to always seek a new adventure.”

Back to today, 2024, and I returned home from my coach and spent some time with art. I pulled out an unfinished drawing I’d started and spend some time with it to see what else might like to develop. When writing, this would be called ‘drafting’. Here, though, it’s just ‘play’.

Does this lady have a great role to play in the world? No. But she did her job for today. She reminded me to start with the ‘work’ that fills my well – because we cannot draw from an empty well.

And after saying it for the past twelve years… I am going to, finally, share the life changing work of The Artist’s Way with you. Stay tuned for more details.

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Creative Breakthroughs Uncategorized

Filling the Well in 2016

images-8
Hungry unicorn

To keep myself accountable to my unicorn for providing her with input from which to draw inspiration for new work, this year, I am keeping a list of everything I’m feeding her. She’s a hungry magical being–an insatiable appetite for creativity–and does tend to get stroppy if I neglect her.

I’m excited about what’s on there already, and looking forward to seeing this grow. If you have any awesome events you know of in the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane or southeast Queensland area, I’m keen to hear them. 🙂

So far, I have:

Books Read (completed, or at least half way, not including the hundreds I read to my toddler). Don’t be alarmed by the brevity of this list. As I’ve said many times, I’m a very slow reader.

  • Hester & Harriet, by Hilary Spiers
  • Fall of the Beasts (Spirit Animals), Immortal Guardians, by Eliot Schaefer
  • Diamond Spirit, by Karen Wood

Theatre Productions/Music

  • Australia Day (Noosa Arts Theatre), February
  • 2016 Season of One Act Plays (BATS, Buderim), April
  • Educating Rita (The Events Centre), April

Speakers

  • Elizabeth Gilbert, February

Workshops/Courses

  • Cheesemaking, Brisbane, March

Travel (research, inspiration)

  • Melbourne, April
  • Writing Retreat, June
  • Burdekin Writers Festival, July
  • Bundaberg Writers Festival, October
  • Tuscany, September

Movies

  • Under the Tuscan Sun
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Creative Breakthroughs

Reclaiming Your Inner Artist

Me, in the middle in blue, participating in a public drumming performance, roughly ten years ago.
Me, in the middle in blue, participating in a public drumming performance, roughly ten years ago.

Ever had that moment when you suddenly think, ‘Far out! What happened to me?’

You’re wondering where your ‘life’ went. You’re wondering where the real YOU went?

I’ve had those moments, many times, such as when I realised I couldn’t lead the life in the corporate world any more. And most recently, when I declared to my husband across the kitchen sink, ‘I’m an artist without any art!’ like it was a national crisis.

A tad melodramatic, sure. But this is what our inner artists do. We ALL have an inner artist and if we don’t pay attention to them, they will start shouting at us louder and louder until we listen to them and do what they want… which is to feed, nurture and love them. (Think of your inner artist as a toddler or a dog and you’re pretty much on the money.) To the inner artist, having no art in my life WAS a crisis, akin to a lack of oxygen. My husband (quite used to me by now) merely said, ‘Well you need to go out and find some.’

So I did. I reclaimed a part of myself that’s been sad for more than 9 years, which was when I stopped going to African drumming classes. The reasons I stopped going were all very logical–we moved inland to ‘the bush’ and I simply had no access to a drumming circle. Then we moved to the Sunshine Coast last year (for the very reason of accessing artistic and lifestyle goodness) but now having a toddler and big, conflicting work schedules for both my husband and me, it just didn’t happen.

But finally, it has. And it felt GOOOOOD. Oh man, my soul (my inner artist) was so, so happy and has been all day today and especially so while I was working on my latest manuscript.

I'm in there!
I’m in there!

It is the central tenant of being an artist that we must

FILL THE WELL BEFORE WE DRAW FROM IT.

In other words, we cannot make art (in my case, novels) if we aren’t first nourishing ourselves with the sights, sounds and experiences we need to then be able to draw from.

Our inner artists are constantly telling us what they want; it’s just that we don’t always listen. That moment when you think, where did my life go, is just a call to action to change something, to make a minor adjustment in the course this ship is sailing.

What’s yours saying?

 

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Creative Breakthroughs

Creative Breakthroughs: My Writing Room

I had a huge breakthrough this weekend and for me it’s so important that I’m going to continue posting about this topic every so often over the course of the year. It started like this.

IMG_1930Recently, I was invited to submit a photograph and some words about ‘my writing room’ to a UK website. I’ve harboured dreams of a magical, inspiring, nourishing writing room for years. And you may know that I’ve written about my intention to create a wonderful writing room for the past two new year’s resolutions. But I keep failing to achieve my dream.

Now, I’ve dithered about this photo task for weeks (I’ve lost count of how many). And the reason is this: my room isn’t what I want it to be. It’s not finished. I still have an unpainted wall and door, broken and missing glass in the French doors, unpolished floorboards covered by a rug, and the cheapest curtains (for want of a word) I could find as a temporary stop until ‘the real curtains’ arrive.  It’s not pretty enough. I don’t have everything just as I want it. I cannot begin to tell you how much time I’ve spent lying awake, stressed about this task!

I’ve been writing seriously now since 1999 and I still don’t have my dream writing room. But, over that time my writing space has improved. I actually wrote an entire memoir on my laptop in bed at one point because I didn’t have any space just of my own. And this time last year, I had just one corner of a room that was also shared by our senior cat and her kitty litter (so lots of smell and grit underfoot), her frequent deposits of cold vomit on the floor, the baby’s change table and the nappy bin (more smell), and the dirty clothes basket. Life in my writing room has, absolutely, improved.

IMG_1920But I’m still not where I want to be—somewhere in the gypsy cave with silks and lanterns and fairy lights, a desk made of gnarled wood taken from an enchanted forest and carved by elves, magical doorways, couches, cushions, a music player, candles, perfect lighting for day and night, perfect temperature control and aromatherapy. Somewhere peaceful with beautiful scenery. Oh, and somewhere my toddler can’t find me.

And what I’m really saying is my room is not perfect. No wonder I think I keep failing to achieve my dream.

*** And this, my friends, was my breakthrough. ***

Perfection—the deadly word for all creative types. Perfection, the unreachable, the unattainable. The tortuous quest to find the worst in ourselves (not the best).

The excuse to stop.

The excuse to not finish.

The excuse to not enjoy ourselves.

The excuse to hide our creativity from the world.

The excuse to fail.

  

From one recovering perfectionist to another, let me be clear:

PERFECTIONISM IS AN EXCUSE.

But it’s not ready. It’s not finished. It’s not good enough. It’s not what I want it to be!

Excuses. All of them.

Oh, they may be well founded in core beliefs, inherited expectations, fears that pretend to protect us from shame, punishment or embarrassment. But they’re still excuses. And they can sneak up on you and sidle into your mind very quietly and sit there for weeks, months, or years. Just as they did with me, provoking anxiety over my writing room.

But after years of stressing about it, I’ve found freedom.

I now know the reality is this: Creating and decorating my writing room is limited by the structure and size of the room; the fact that we’re still renovating a 113-year-old house and the rest of the house isn’t ‘finished’ yet either; and finances and priorities like, you know, essential plumbing, seven horses to feed and food and bills. There are limits to what I can do and that’s okay. That’s life. In fact, we need limits or we’d lose our minds. It doesn’t mean I have to stop, or have to hide what I’ve done. It’s a work in progress. Nothing in life is ever finished. Nothing. It just changes from one thing to another.

And the lesson here is that this applies to every creative aspect of our life. Everything that seems big and overwhelming can be done by breaking it down into its components. If you want to be an author, you’re going to have to write a book. (Better yet, you’re going to have to write a page, and then another page, and another.) If you want to be an opera singer, you’re going to need to take a lesson. Want a holiday but can’t afford one? Go to the beach for the day. Want a horse but don’t have land? Go to a riding centre and ride for a day. Want to change the colour of the walls in your bedroom? You might first need to de-clutter the room so you can actually reach the walls.

And if you want the perfect writing room? Start with the perfect potted plant… which I did, this weekend, by the way. Isn’t it lovely? And I bought a lamp, too. Just two things for my writing-room-in-progress. And I can’t tell you how much joy that fern and that lamp bring me when I walk into the room. The whole space suddenly feels welcoming and nurturing and I want to spend time there.

So, loud and proud, I’m sharing this with you. This is my writing room. Not finished. A work in progress. And it will probably always be a work in progress for the rest of my life. I accept that now. And I am amending my new year’s resolutions from ‘create my perfect writing room’ or ‘fix my writing room’ to ‘continue to nurture my writing room’.

Because nurturing—of ourselves, our family, our careers, our creativity, and our living spaces—is a daily necessity. I will nurture my writing room and in return, my writing room will nurture me.