productivity

thanks julia cameron

I decided to do The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron after seven aborted attempts ranging from 2010-2025. If you’re not au fait with The Way, as nobody calls it, it’s a book written to help blocked creatives. Not just writers with writers’ block, but anyone who’d love to make things but doesn’t ever seem to get round to it, hasn’t got the time, confidence is low or they just don’t have the cajones. I was going to write ‘balls’ and thought ‘that’s too gendered’ so went for cajones, which is Spanish for ‘balls’.

Today I reached week five (I started it in September) which is characterised by something called Reading Deprivation, but is really a deprivation of all creative input. You are not to watch anything or listen to anything for a week. You’re allowed to hear people talk to you and see billboards and do an online Tesco shop (I think - it was written in the eighties), but there must be no intentional cultural consumption, the idea being that blocked creatives sometimes use reading books, watching TV and listening to podcasts as procrastination.

It’s also a sort of ‘what happens once the noise has stopped’ experiment. Once you get rid of all that creative input, you will have no choice but to fill it with output. Without input, you’re forced to put out. Am I making sense.

As somebody who reads novels to silence mental anguish (I become restless and tetchy and weird if I don’t have a book on the go) the concept of not reading anything for a week is terrifying enough, but now I can’t plug the gap with TV, podcasts or compulsively buying stuff off Etsy without checking the country and/or product dimensions first, meaning two tea towels for a child’s doll’s house will arrive in seven months time with an attached bill for £53 of customs tax?? What am I meant to do?????? Julia doesn’t mention scrolling on your phone for hours, but I’m guessing that’s also a no. I might have a breakdown.

The big worry is sleep. Every night I read until I feel sleepy, then have to listen to someone else reading to stop my brain presenting me with a sad video I saw in 2008 about the Chinese wet market. Sometimes even this isn’t enough; in the thirty second handover from wooden book to audiobook, my brain will say ‘isn’t it interesting that you don’t have a plan for when you’re old and alone’ and we’re off! 4am, there she is, in the living room googling various pension plans and investing in natural wine via an app*.

*I did do this at 4am two years ago and lost everything I put in. Wouldn’t recommend investing in natural wine via an app.

For anyone interested in my audio-based sleep methods of choice: first I did Sleepy History where a man told me the history of department stores, or marzipan, but then I finished all of those and moved onto The Sleepy Bookshelf, where a woman reads Wuthering Heights, recapping the story at the beginning of each episode, so I’m not worried I’ll miss anything.

I need The Sleepy Bookshelf. Without it, my sister (who lives in Melbourne) receives messages like this in the middle of the day:

What’s so irritating is that all of this mania is exactly why Julia Cameron says we need to complete the week of Reading Deprivation. You’re meant to be uncomfortable, you’re meant to discover things within that discomfort. Nobody ever learned anything new by doing the same stuff all the time.

So I began today and approached it with curiosity. I tried not to get annoyed that, moments before declaring I would be depriving myself of my very grown up, very adult, psychological blankey (blankey being a bit of rubber sheeting I used to carry around with me everywhere until I was five because it made me feel safe, like novels do now, or scrolling, or TV), the book suggests you list Fun Hobbies and then is all ‘Well look at that! Now you can’t read anything, you’ve got time to do those fun hobbies you just wrote down!’

Julia, do you know how far in advance you have to book zorbing? There aren’t any salsa classes running this week, and the community gardening sessions for people frightened of soil doesn’t start til February. What the fuck am I supposed to do with all this time?

A while ago I booked a writing retreat with my dog for this Wednesday, so I look forward to sitting in the Airbnb thinking about death while my dog writes a novel, but in the meantime here’s how today went:

1. Went to get coffee

Went to my local cafe, saw a local market and said to my partner ‘if I buy anything, you have to kick me in the head’. Five minutes later I was in the coffee shop like this:

No it is accurate, my partner took a picture:

Also we discovered that, due to my mishearing of the gentleman selling said cushions, I’d accidentally haggled him upwards. Someone else in the cafe had bought some, and each of theirs were £5 cheaper than each of mine. :-(.

2. Went to a gallery

Normally can’t be arsed going to art galleries for some reason (negativity is always about yourself: I get worried I won’t understand the art and consequently will feel thick, one of my least favourite feelings) but tagged along to see Bridget Riley’s new one at The Turner. By ‘one’ I suppose I mean ‘art’. Had no idea what sort of thing she does, so when I saw some wavy shapes on a bit of wall I did nearly walk out.

However, wanting to be a good sport I read the explanation (in case it said something like ‘these shapes are, of course, a rumination on the human vagina’), but it just told you the name of the painting (something like ‘Abstract 2’) and then I was suddenly close enough to said painting to notice that, when you look at it, all the shapes start moving like you’ve done mushrooms.

Turns out Bridget Riley is the queen of visual trippery and art-based hallucinogens; some felt like you’d fallen into a bunch of lines, some were swirls that twirled all over the place, one forced me to look away because it’s the closest visual representation of my own brain I’ve ever seen. It appears to makes sense, but on closer inspection nothing fits together or follows the pattern like you’d want it to. I kept whispering ‘why is the green line there’, if that helps further your understanding.

Also I don’t know what doing mushrooms feels like, don’t worry mum and dad, both of whom read this Substack (dad has smoked weed once and told me he didn’t like the way it made him ‘oscillate’).

But back to the exhibition: I was so glad I went! By the end I felt like a child with new eyes. You know, that famous saying.

3. Cleaned my glasses

Although the exhibition was a hit, that didn’t solve the rest of the day. I came back at 5pm with no idea what to do for the next six hours (bear in mind I am an insomniac). Cleaned both my glasses with lens cleaner. Do they look better than when I deploy the Sleeve Method? I suppose.

4. Cut the collar off a jacket

Decided to cut the collar off a jacket. It sort of worked. We’re not even one day into Reading Deprivation and I’ve become a haberdasher.

5. Made ramen

My sister bought me a ramen recipe book called Ramen, so I made chilli miso ramen. The instructions created a sort of frenzied gameshow atmosphere where I’m ‘plunging noodles into iced water’ while ‘boiling broth’ as mince fries in ginger and garlic on the hob. I used four pans, which is too many pans. Everything was crashing about, I dropped a colander on the floor, it sounded like rehearsals for a particularly chaotic brass band (of pans).

On top of everything else yeah the dinner was nice, but it only used up 20 minutes of my evening (the recipe took 15 minutes to make and I eat really fast). I’ve still got hours and hours and hours of abyss to fill.

6. Left a Trip Advisor review for my local cafe

This is technically creative output because I used a fake name.

7. Edited a video about fake scotch eggs

Me and my friend Lou have started an Instagram thing where we put all our plant based stuff for a laugh, and people comment things like ‘just eat animals’ and ‘vegan food actually contains a lot of additives’. Anyway, a company called Veg Life sent us eggless scotch eggs (which were surprisingly good) so I edited the video. Again, this book was written in the 1980s, so I can only guess Julia’s stance on Instagram Edits.

8. Planned a wall mural

My mum’s coming round the week after next to help me paint a mural in our living room. I bought the paints and some paintbrushes and if you think I won’t be updating you on this in due course, you’re very much mistaken. For now I’ll just say: I bought too much paint.

9. Considered more interior decoration

My partner found me staring at the little alcoves in our dining room wall - I want to call them cornichons, but that’s a small pickle - visualising them in different colours. I might paint them too, why not. I might also glue seashells onto a picture frame in the bathroom. Maybe I’ll change all the doorknobs in the house. I’ll darn curtains! This isn’t coming from a healthy place of burgeoning creativity, by the way, but from a woman who cannot be alone with her thoughts. I’m going to end up reupholstering the Airbnb on Wednesday aren’t I.

10. Rearranged the apps on my phone home screen

Good. Lord.

11. Wrote this.

It’s 10pm and once I’ve finished this post, that’s…it. For hours. Suppose I could have a bath, but what am I meant to do in there if I can’t read? I don’t want to stare wetly at the towel rail. Nude. This is awful.

Worth saying at this stage that my screen time trebled today because I was staring at paints for murals, Trip Advisor, Instagram edits, my own home screen and googling ‘what are cornichons’. Surely that’s technically reading and I’ve failed already.

Maybe it’s time to try meth.

x

EDIT: It’s 9am, I went to sleep without The Sleepy Bookshelf at 1am (great!) and had the world’s weirdest, most violent dreams (oh). The sort where you’re glad nobody can see into your mind or you’d get arrested. Am knackered and ashamed and scared by the amount of hours in the day.

FURTHER EDIT: It’s 3.41pm, I’ve gone for a long walk, done all my admin for the week, drafted emails, cleaned, hoovered and cooked. I’m really tense and annoyed and the cushion market stall man has gone so I can’t even buy more cushions. WHAT AM I MEANT TO DO NOW. OK fine I’m going to write something. I’m going to look at my notebook and rework the script I was meant to be doing. Cool, well done Julia, you broke me, it worked, and I didn’t even have to zorb.