The Research Ruse

Artist’s Way Week #4 Recovering a Sense of Integrity (part deux)


This is the second blog entry for week #4, and it is not because is my favorite chapter. If anything, it is one of my most difficult. It just happened that week #4 occurred over the 4th of July week this year. Our Artist’s Way group opted to take the holiday week off, giving this chapter a full 2 weeks of my attention. It was not necessarily a bad thing to spend more time contemplating this chapter, although I did have to put my foot down and limit that reading deprivation exercise to only 1 week!

This past week I was reminded of Julia Cameron’s observation, that as creatives we tend to look the gift horse directly in the mouth, then slap it on the rump and shoo it off! I cannot come up with a better analogy for week #4’s reading deprivation exercise, other than to add, that by postponing it as long as possible I personally made a valiant attempt to not look at the gift horse at all.

Over the years I have devised an ingenious way of protecting my Artist’s Date activities from judgmental friends and family by calling them artistic research. Since the mere word RESEARCH typically brings up thoughts of high browed academia and hours of tedious study, most of them will drop that conversation immediately. No further explanation is expected from me and I am relieved of duty, no need in explaining how skipping stones at the local pond or playing with a big gooey blob of silly putty is necessary for my art.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) in this past week of reading deprivation, I made a harrowing discovery. I have managed to fend off my own creativity with that very same clever ruse. I recognized that I was calling my all of my own reading, RESEARCH!

I had successfully convinced myself that reading about creativity could make me more creative than actually doing it.

This coming week, I will…
#1 actively create more
#2 confine my RESEARCH to house keeping techniques
And
#3 pray that none of my family or friends read this blog!