Monsters From the Deep

So my Creativity Course got off to a roaring start and the first thing we have to do is learn to write 'Morning Pages'.  Writing Morning Pages is a technique in which you empty the subconscious, sort of vomit it onto the page, at least once a day. Preferably you do it first thing in the morning, without thinking, judging or editing your work.  It's not a new idea - one wonders whether artists and writers have been at something similar since the first troubador hiked his wares at the castle gate.

Since the first troubadour...

There are various famous works one could learn from - the journals of Virginia Woolf, to name but one, and Dorothea Brande's brilliant classic 'Becoming A Writer'. Out of print now and hellishly expensive, it's still worth looking out for. DB gives those wonderful pep talks so redolent of old black and white movies. "If you fail repeatedly at this exercise, give up writing. Your resistance is actually greater than your desire to write." Superb, no doubt spoken with a cut-glass accent, it almost makes one feel like a grown up.

Dear, Dear Dorothea...

 Natalie Goldberg also gives some great advice about writing practice, very Zen, and I refer to 'Wild Mind' constantly, a decade after buying it. However, in the year 2013, when artists talk of 'doing their pages', they usually mean, doing their pages a la Julia Cameron.

For the next 16 weeks it's Julia's way of doing pages that I shall be sticking with, day in, day out, or stand up and explain at the weekly 'Check In.'

After working my way slowly through the larder and chomping everything that's not nailed down, I finally get to it, scribbling all the dismal, unfulfilled truths about my writing and my writing past, all the unfinished works, the plummeting self confidence, the 'Monsters from the Deep' who said, or thought foul things. The ones that looked at me in some awful way, or so I believed at the time. It doesn't feel good to get it out there. I was raised in the 'Keep Calm and Don't Mention a Thing' school of optimism. It's hard to believe, right now that in 112 days my creativity will be as high as one of those old Barage Balloons you see in Foyle's War. But, as the man himself would say, with that wry and rather sexy smile, 'We'll see.'

Monsters from the Deep

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices 

Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809-1892

The Artist's Date or in Britain, a 'Jolly'

Out on a Jolly

So now I'm trying the next tool from the Creativity Course - the Artist's Date. Most blocked creatives find this creative 'playtime' much harder than the 'work' of morning pages. The idea is that, quite simply, you take your artist self out on a date, just the two of you. You're not supposed to achieve anything, feel anything, or come back with a result. There are no rules; results are cumulative, random, serendipitous - a red London bus pops into your narrative three months hence. You forget to be depressed in the mornings, writubg for ten minutes in the cafe instead. You don't drink as much gin and and you've enough cash  for a Creative Writing workshop. That sort of result.

No Rules

I found the concept slightly creepy at first. Your 'inner artist' is  a child-like creature, and in the UK the term 'date' has a distinctly adult feel.  Taking my newly emergent artist child on a date sounded pervy, until I changed the term to 'a day out with my artist'. Or even a 'Jolly'.

A mad dash through a street fountain

I discovered pretty quickly, your inner artist might be a child but the day out doesn't have to be childish,unless you want it to. This is no human child, but a wild, untamed chimera you're hoping to unleash. The artist small person doesn't do cute and it definitely doesn't do pink.

A bag of delicious fruit

The Jolly doesn't have to cost a lot of money, either -  some of the best ones cost nothing. You  devote a little time to yourself doing something that brightens your spirit, and gets your creative juices flowing. Perhaps a mad dash through a street fountain, a visit to the market for a bag of delicious fresh fruit,  mudlarking at the edge of the River Thames - but do it alone, with no other motive other than to stimulate the creative juices.

Mudlarking at the edge of the Thames

 For my first Jolly, I chose one of the two things no-one has a right to explore even once, according to Sir Thomas Beecham: incest and Morris Dancing. In London, the May Bank Holiday is a perfect excuse for normally sensible people to break out in Morris dancing outside the pub. I took myself to one one the banks of the river, feeling a bit of a twit.

Breaking out in Morris Dancing

  And whadda ya know, my inner artist really did glow.

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough

Mae West 1893-1980