These pages are not meant to be read

Morning pages as lifeline

So I’m doing The Artist’s Way. I realized last week that if I started right away, the twelve weeks of it would take me through the end of the year, and that seemed perfect and like a relief: follow this path back into the novel.

Chapter 1 is about recovering a sense of safety around the idea of doing creative work to begin with, and no matter how many times I work through this book, I find there is always more to be done here. What Julia Cameron calls “the Censor” is strong. The first week is about identifying core negative beliefs (e.g. “if I make my art, it will hurt my family”) and countering them with creative affirmations (e.g. “my creativity heals myself and others”). This is a never-ending project.

The morning pages are easier than I remember, or perhaps I am better at doing them now. I no longer think of them as journaling but as meditating on the page — often I write sentences and then label them “thought” or “feeling.” I also visualize myself taking all of the chaos swirling in my brain and putting it inside the notebook so that it’s no longer in my head. This helps it feel more like a daily ritual, rather than thinking of journaling as a documentary practice. I even wrote at the beginning of this section of my notebook: “These pages are not meant to be read; if you are reading them, you shouldn’t be.”

These pages are a lifeline right now, when the rest of the day tends to involve some new news of human cruelty or environmental catastrophe, about which, two notes:

1. In the face of destruction, make your art.

2. The writer Niina Pollari, who lives in Marshall, NC, wrote beautifully on Thursday about the hurricane and the American disaster or, as she puts it, “the idea of a particularly American response to a cataclysmic event.” At the end she shared a list of local orgs to donate to if you can.

This week in Leave news

You all. The cover reveal and preorder will go live on TUESDAY. I am giddy — a little nervous but mostly just excited. I cannot wait for this book to find its people.

This week in writing

I was traveling again this week, this time with my kiddo, so not much time to write, but I did make progress on my Rockford essay for Rachel’s anthology. I’ve moved through the struggle phase and into the fun phase with this piece, and it’s starting to come together. It’s about this building:

This week in reading

I think I might be obsessed with An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives. The essays are weird and also academic but also at times very personal and entirely surprising. The final essay in the collection, “The Three-Body Problem,” is one of the best pregnancy and birth essays I’ve ever read.

I’ll be back soon with a celebration of the cover of Leave and a request to preorder. Buckle up for book promo — thank you and I love you!