How to Cure Procrastination and Start an Artistic Project - The Artist’s Way, Check In – Week 9

Laziness. You might feel it as a painter who puts off buying a new canvas and starting a project, or a writer with a great idea that never makes the paper. Thanks to Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, I’ve come to re-word laziness as the fear to start, no longer damning procrastination or beating myself up when I can’t face the page, but instead recognising my hurts and healing them with compassion. 

We might sometimes flog ourselves when we don’t write in a disciplined way, as we assume other great artists do. “Look at them go, they’re so disciplined, and here I am, making my fourth cup of tea.” As much as Cameron doesn’t slate discipline, and does mention we might still rise early to create, she talks about an even greater asset; enthusiasm. As a guitarist, I remember jumping out of bed at university with a song in my head. Two hours later, I hadn’t showered, and even when I did, played for half an hour in my towel. Discipline bought out of enthusiasm is a loving, creative exercise. We create because we must! We can’t expect it every day and shouldn’t be hard on ourselves when we're not. We’re not slaving machines. It’s okay to not be so disciplined.

That is, unless we’re so paralysed by fear that we don’t start at all. 

Since those towel guitaring uni days, I’ve stopped playing. This week’s exercise had me think about why. Firstly, I entered a competition for the second year running, and got the same score, despite practising hard. I read the winner’s comments on how this was their first entry, how they didn’t prepare, and must have a natural talent. These caused hurts, but not enough to quit. I played open mic nights in Norwich, and people hated it, at least I felt. I was actually invited to come to a new musicians group, but did I? No. I harboured my failings and started giving up. I guess I was also afraid of success. What happens if this group like me? Will I have the time? I joined a band, and that fell through. It seemed all my efforts were in vain, and it was easier to quit.

Cameron calls this process, where an artist stops in their tracks after failure (and success), a Creative U-turn. It’s fear, and can cause an artist to procrastinate, call themselves lazy, and give up entirely.

Oddly enough, I can feel lazy when I do write. If laziness is fear, writing makes me afraid. I often write feeling I should do something more productive, perhaps something that pays. I’m afraid writing will cause me to starve and should buck up my ideas and start a more serious living. I also fear my writing sucks and should leave it to the pros. This was a huge revelation for me, and I’ve started to heal through affirmation, telling myself writing will support me both financially and emotionally and bring me joy if I continue, and allowed myself to do so.

We need to be compassionate to cure procrastination and start an artistic project, which means embracing our paralysing hurts, being understanding of the creative child within, and encouraging it through love and understanding. I think it’s also about allowing our artist child to be a little silly. I visualised myself at a Q+A of a film I’d written, and made a cut and stick of me at the Oscars with an award. It was a silly but fun task, just the sort of thing my artist child needed. I vow to tread softly, and look forwarding to learning about self-protection in next week’s tenth week of the Artist’s Way.