The format of this "class" is going to be read and discuss. Doing the assignments in the book is encouraged but optional. As with any type of self help, it will work best when tailored to your needs.

Some of the assignments the book asks you to do are pretty personal. You definitely don't have to share if you don't want to, but if there is an assignment or activity that you'd like to share with us, please do so.

READING: Introduction and week 1.

HOMEWORK: Do as many of the assignments at the end of week 1 as you like. In particular, do the ones that inspire you and the ones you are most resistant to.

I did the morning pages for a full week just like the book suggested -- 3 pages, first thing in the morning. After that, I got sidetracked and wasn't always feeling up to getting up first thing in the morning. I would sometimes do the pages later in the day, and sometimes just 2 pages instead of 3.

I have to say that doing it just like the book says works better. When I fully concentrated on the pages and when I forced myself to go to 3 pages even though I wasn't sure what else tow rite about -- that's when I really started to learn things about myself. That's how I figured out where my pressure to achieve came from -- a pressure that has been suffocating my writing for a while now.

Writing the pages amidst distractions really doesn't work. You just think and write about the distractions. Writing later in the day seems to work all right but I find that it needs to be a quiet place and that I need to push myself to write to 3 full pages...that's when I get past the mundane garble and find out what's really inside of me.

I've also done two very modest artist dates.

I've held off on doing any of the tasks/exercises, although I have thought about them. Christine is right, some of it gets very personal, and hopefully I won't get too squeamish about discussing them. Honestly, this is the kind of stuff that a year ago I'd have looked at very skeptically, and probably smirked about, but enough has happened to me in that time, and while thinking about the early parts of the process, that I'm beginning to think there are some things about myself that need to have a light shined on them. In some ways I'm afraid of where this might go with me.

So, I'll probably go ahead and dive into the exercises now that this thread is up even though it's a couple days early. I think the blurts and affirmations come up first. Right now I'm a magnificent blurter.

I've noticed, though, that I have waves in doing the morning pages. Getting started is a little hard, but then once I get going I can usually do a whole page. Then I stall... and if I push myself I get another wave of... whatever. Then the third wave. The first few days it was all whining and complaining. It made me think, gosh, am I that negative a person? But as I did it over the week I think it got less whining and more just contemplative. And anxious. Geez! I had no idea I was that anxious a person! I'm not planning to reread any of it but it's hard not to take note as you're doing it. I'm getting better at ignoring the judgmental voice though, which is good. Also, after just a few days, I could feel my thoughts lining up in my head, waiting to be written out. Often times in the morning I'll be in half-sleep thinking about the thoughts I'm going to be writing when I wake up.

I was resisting the idea of an artist date, especially in light of the fact that I'm exclusively nursing a brand new baby and can't be far from her for very long at the moment. But then I thought, it doesn't have to be anything earth shattering. Just an hour with me, myself, and I doing something that I want to do.

So this week I'm leaving my husband with the kids for an hour while I soak in a bubble bath and read a book.

I picked up The Artist's Way about a year and a half ago. Worked through the first couple of chapters, but I wasn't writing at the time and I don't think I was in the right "place" to benefit from it.

I did morning pages consistently for a couple of months. What I discovered:
- my creative energy is at it's absolute lowest level first thing in the morning. I'm tired; I'm thinking about and planning my day ahead; I'm getting ready for work. Writing 3 pages was like pulling teeth and didn't get any easier.
- I really hate writing longhand. My brain works faster than my writing hand, so I was scrawling barely legible graffiti across the page, getting a cramp in the process. I found myself becoming annoyed by having to write longhand.

I'd like to try morning pages again, because I do think there is something of value here, BUT I'd like to try a variation:
- I'd do them at night, just before I went to bed.
- I'd use my laptop and type a page in Word.

Love the idea of the artist date. And like annepin, I don't really have any artistic enemies. My girlfriend is a dancer and choreographer and encourages my artistic side!!

I jotted down a few enemies of creativity the other day and forgot about it until I read some of your observations on this thread -- that you don't really have any enemies of creativity. I started thinking, maybe we (myself included) aren't using a broad enough definition of "enemy." Maybe it doesn't have to be a person, but rather whatever excuse keeps you from creating.

For example:

Financial concerns: Writing doesn't pay the bills.

Job/family: Are you too tired at the end of the day to think creatively?

My initial list of enemies started with people. I wrote down my mother, who has never actively discouraged writing but has never actively encouraged it either. She's always pushed the idea that I need a real job and that I should never allow myself to become dependent upon a man. As it happens, that's exactly what I'm doing. My husband is making enough money that we're comfortable living on his income alone. I take care of our 2 kids and I write. And every day I can't shake the feeling that what I'm doing is useless, unproductive, not what I should be doing, and that I ought to get a "real" job.

That's an obvious one, I suppose.

The others were not so obvious. I settled on the assortment of bullies I ran into as a child. The ones who helped ruin my self esteem. This may not be writing specific, but a general lack of confidence in myself isn't helpful in any aspect of my life. Ironically, they also kind of helped me because I spent a lot of time as a child daydreaming of ways to escape my lot in life. (Most of these involved being taken by aliens. )

I got stuck at that point but today I think I'm ready to complete my list:

1. My mom
2. Low self-esteem (due in great part to childhood bullies)
3. Fear of being cliche (This probably needs some explanation. When I first started daydreaming and writing, I never cared if an idea had been done before. I just wrote what felt right to me. Nowadays I spend a lot of time bashing away ideas because they're too similar to other ideas when maybe, if I gave them a chance, they'd blossom into the best thing I'd ever done.)
4. Deadlines (I schedule myself to the point of suffocating my muse. A little bit of structure is good, but I push myself too hard and judge myself too severely when an idea simply won't come. Creative processes don't always work on a managerial-style timetable.)

This is going to sound terribly cliched but most of my problems can be boiled down to my father. I had a difficult time with him growing up, feeling as if he never quite approved or appreciated me. He died when I was 14, long before I had the maturity to make up with him in any meaningful way.

My family was, in an odd way, both rich and poor. My dad had grown up in a really rich family so he was used to living extravagantly. But he never made much money in his life, and he squandered most of the money he'd inherited from his mother. So, my sister and I would have horseback riding lessons at the same time that he couldn't pay the electricity bill. He was incredibly talented and artistically driven--he loved to play music and he dabbled at writing fiction. So, from this background, I've developed the attitude that art doesn't pay. It's a frivolous endeavor, it's a waste of time. No good will come of it, it's only a selfish endeavor. Real jobs are supposed to be unpleasant (as were my mom's various jobs, after my dad passed away). There are a number of associated thoughts that I won't go into here.

My next big bullies are my eighth grade English teacher, who told me I wasn't talented enough to write a story from a wolf's POV ("Unless you're Jack London or something I really don't see how you can do it.") and my 10th grade English teacher, who told me science fiction and fantasy aren't worthwhile but can only be trashy. I still carry that believe. Sometimes I'm ashamed to say I write fantasy when I tell people I'm writing a story.

It never ceases to amaze me the things teachers can say, often out of hand, that really cut down their students.

I've done good on my morning pages each day, and have found myself addressing some of the tasks in them, so I'm getting double duty out of them For the first time I actually looked forward to writing them togay, which was kind of cool.

I haven't heard much about assertions and blurts. Since I was highly averse to such an exercise, at least the assertion part, I spent some time with it. I cringe writing some form of "I am great" ten times and my Sensor was up to the task with insightful, pithy, and sometimes downright funny blurts. I found it interesting that while the topic I was asserting might be close to writing, the Sensor quickly wandered off point and assailed many parts of my life, past and present. I don't know what the connections are yet, other than through holism, but it gives me a lot to think about. I've yet to get much done with turning the blurts around yet, but still have a couple more days.

Like some of the rest of you the monster list was a little difficult, but because I really haven't had much explicit opposition to my artistic endeavors, more the opposite. Plus I've never been one to blame others for my misfortunes and mistakes.

This will sound a bit petty, but I had to put my ex on the list, not so much for active suppression, but more for heaping stress and generally undermining my sense of worth, something that Mr. Sensor is still having a field day blurting about.

I also, sadly, had to list many my collective supporters (teachers, grandparents, aunties) over the years. While they were well-meaning, their praise was often a bit over the top and embarassing, enough that I would often shy away from doing things to prompt it.

But at the top of the list is me, if for no other reason than I let the other crap get to me. But there's more to it than just that. I tend to try to set my sights too high, and get too far too quickly. That makes falling short highly likely, which in turn keeps the Sensor full of bullets. I guess the Sensor is ruling my life at present.