Get Serious About Play

Today, let's get serious with our art by getting serious with our play.

LUXURY (continued)

Creative living requires the luxury of time, which we carve out for ourselves—even if it’s fifteen minutes for quick morning pages and a ten-minute mini bath after work.

Creative living requires the luxury of space for ourselves, even if all we manage to carve out is one special bookshelf and a windowsill that is ours. (My study has a window shelf of paperweights and seashells.) Remember that your artist is a youngster and youngsters like things that are “mine.” My chair. My book. My pillow.

Designating a few things special and yours alone can go a long way toward making you feel pampered. Chinatown anywhere offers a beautiful teacup and saucer for under five dollars. Secondhand stores often have one-of-a-kind china plates that make an afternoon snack a more creative experience.

Much of what we do in a creative recovery may seem silly. Silly is a defense our Wet Blanket adult uses to squelch our artist child. Beware of silly as a word you toss at yourself. Yes, artist dates are silly—that’s the whole point.

Creativity lives in paradox: serious art is born from serious play.

(The Artist's Way, 2016, p. 112)

I routinely allow myself the luxury of free time.

download printable affirmation card

CREATION

Bake something.

(If you have a sugar problem, make a fruit salad.) Creativity does not have to always involve capital-A art. Very often, the act of cooking something can help you cook something up in another creative mode. When I am stymied as a writer, I make soups and pies.