Artist’s Way Exercises

Probably not too terribly interesting to you guys, but there ya go…

Week One, Exercise Five

Write a letter to the editor in your defense. Mail it to yourself. It is great fun to write this letter in the voice of your wounded artist child: “To whom it may concern: Sister Ann Rita is a jerk and has pig eyes and I can too spell!”

To Whom It May Concern:

I do not understand this exercise. It is poopy. Poopy things are not fun and I do not enjoy doing them. Unless it’s taking a real poopy. That isn’t so bad. I like to read when I’m having a poopy.

Yeah, for real. I’m totally not getting this exercise and I believe it’s one of the reasons I’ve been held up for the last few weeks. Letter to the editor in my defense? What’s up with that? I think it is supposed to be in response to the horror story that I wrote about, but I’m not really sure that I have any particular person I need to reply to in regard to that one. I mean, I’m the only person who made me feel bad there. Nobody else was responsible.

So there ya go, editor. That’s my letter to you and the statement I need to make. You don’t have people bringing you down. You bring yourself down. You are surrounded by people who support you in what you do and believe in you. The only thing stopping you is your own mental blocks.

Which, in the end, is what all of this is about.

Week One, Exercise Eight

Imaginary Lives: If you had five other lives to lead, what would you do in each of them? Whatever occurs to you, jot it down. Do not over think this exercise. The point of these lives is to have fun in them – more fun than you might be having in this one. Look over your list and select one. Then do it this week.

Actor (full-time), Writer, Teacher, Motivational Speaker, Nutritionist

It’s called gratitude, and that’s right

Another exercise I had was to write a thank you letter for one of my happy pieces of encouragement…

As I mentioned in my post yesterday I had a very hard time coming up with three enemies to my creative self-worth due to the fact that I had far more positive artistic influences in my life than negative ones. That said, I had an equally hard time listing three positives because there were a LOT to choose from. I did manage to finally pick three to write down, and of the influences I selected was Salvatore “Sam” Falco.

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It’s my own worst enemy

Editor’s Note – As part of my work with The Artist’s Way I am occasionally required to complete certain assignments that are intended to help me discover the things that have me “blocked” as an artist.  Unlike the daily exercise of completing 3 pages of long hand in a journal these stories do not, necessarily, have to be private.  As such I figured that since I was writing this anyway I’d go ahead and put some actual content in this journal for a change instead of letting it fester here unused.  Please understand, though, that what I am writing is not necessarily going to be a rational take on my experiences or any kind of plea for help.  On the contrary, these entries are actually part of a conscious effort to improve myself and my self-worth.

I have been asked to describe one of the “monsters” from my past that has held me back as an artist.  I really had to think hard about this because, frankly, I’ve had more support than not in my quest to be an artist. After thinking about it for a while I did manage to come up with my three, and here are the details on one of them…

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