I’ve been on a course. Yes, another course. My emotional and psychic buffeting in the stone-polishing drum of life continues apace. If I’m not careful, I’ll round off so many of my rough edges there’ll be nothing of me left. This course was called The Artist’s Way At Work. It’s based on a book, The Artist’s Way, originally written over 10 years ago by Julia Cameron, who, in a gratuitously trivial but nevertheless curiosity-value-added footnote, was once married to Martin Scorsese.
It’s a handbook with 12 chapters, the idea being you read one chapter a week and follow the exercises along the way. It’s the single most successful book I’ve recommended to my clients over the years, some of whom have enthusiastically reported that it helps them to get moving and focussed, taking their creative pursuits (not the least of which being the creative pursuit called living) seriously.
But, as my friend says, the plumber’s tap is always dripping, and despite having known how good it is, I’ve not actually finished it myself. My sister, who gave me the copy, has a theory that no one actually finishes the book. I aim to buck that trend; this plumber has decided finally to look at his own tap and get a new washer.

I’ve joined an evening class to help me do it, as groups invariably are good for me. I’m not that great on self-motivation (bit of a drawback for a writer.) There are two main techniques of the book/course and they are simple.
You can try them at home. One is a daily routine of scribbling three-pages of writing first thing in the morning. Any old rubbish will do, just write non-stop until the end of page three. It takes me about 30 minutes. The second technique is to take yourself out on a date by yourself every week for about an hour – anything you can think of as long as you are on your own and it’s a treat. My first one was a stunner: Caravaggio’s last paintings, completed while he was on the run, four hundred years ago, on show in London’s National Gallery. The last painting on display, David and the beheaded Goliath, was an epiphany for me: his own head painted as Goliath’s, and a half-naked piece of street trade as the triumphant David.
Even the gallery’s notes speculated that the sultry model was a lover of Caravaggio’s – to this stimulated eye, it was a certainty. There’s no escaping the look of a young buck who knows he’s got sexual power. The painting had been sent to the Papal Court as a gesture, seeking pardon, but he was killed before he knew that the gift had impressed, and the pardon had been granted. The painting was prophecy.
The two techniques are very simple and there isn’t a catch. This is not a mysterious book, or an esoteric one. It’s based on many years working with professional screenwriters and other writers and artists trying to figure out what helps them be more effective and productive.
But, being about creativity, it does invite and invoke a sense of wonder and an appreciation of that which is synchronous, not rational, numinous. Being about creativity, it is about how everyone, even those in supposedly non-creative jobs, can let their imaginations flourish.
We are always much happier when something we thought up ourselves takes form; whether in work or at home. Google’s success on the world stage stems, in part, from the policy of encouraging employees to spend a fifth of their time on their own ideas.
We’re on week seven now. I’ve survived the horrors of week six.
It was a nightmare. And also extremely thought-provoking, exciting and amazing. Called Media Deprivation week, we were asked to forego all contact with television, radio, newspapers, books, background music, the internet. A week of silence, outside of what work required of us, punctuated solely by real-time face-to-face or telephone conversations with people.
The first two days I found the worst. I felt utterly without comfort, inconsolable. That which I thought would be hard giving up, online chatting and cruising, didn’t occupy a second of my thoughts. I relished not having to play those games. But I realised television has become the way I close down from 9pm onwards – I retreat into a slack-jawed brain-dead state, passively receiving whatever is on, indiscriminately, until my eyes start to droop. It was Big Brother for the first few weeks of this series, but it could have been anything really. Often I would fall asleep on the sofa.
But now in the evenings, on my own in the silent flat, I’m thinking, busily. My mind won’t stop. I’m figuring things out. I’m trying to solve problems. My notebook for story ideas is never out of my grasp, ready for jotting down dialogue I’ve heard, insights I’ve had, plot twists I’d like to inflict on a fictional character or two. I hadn’t a clue that my brain was so eager to work in this way.
I sorely missed the radio in the mornings – it’s how I gradually wake up, and my brain is usually thick with sleep for a good 30 minutes before it starts to function.
But this is perfect time for the Morning Pages – which are designed to be the repository for the morning gunk, and by the time you get to page three you are orientated towards your day having done a bit of planning and a bit of complaining and a bit of waffling. It clears your head of detritus, flushes it out. It works.
Towards the end of the week-long exercise, I was breaking the rules. I was writing emails to my friends, but I figured that was not against the spirit of the exercise – personal letters are of a different quality entirely to chats on MSN Messenger or surfing noticeboards or chatrooms.
I was sorely tested, when, half-way through, my hard drive failed completely on my laptop. It seemed, bleakly, that if Media Deprivation was what I was asking for, Media Deprived I certainly became. Backups had recently been made of my writing and work-related notes, but all other stuff – music, pictures, emails – were completely lost. It’s been painful.
But it has been made much easier because on my most recent Artist’s Date, I took myself on a walk along the canals in central London, one hot Saturday evening. After I had marvelled at the tranquil tree-lined docks full of houseboats, and took photographs of a beautiful tall crane who was eying me across the canal, I wandered home and, along the way, noticed a quaint little shop called “PC Doctor” with a sign saying “laptops repaired”. I took the number down, thinking that I may need it, as my laptop had been beeping a few times in protest at something.
The very next day it died. The PC Doctor turned out to be a gem of a human being, a prince among men – a patient, calm, knowledgeable expert who explained everything and ordered the new hard drive and commiserated with me on my loss. He had it ready a day before he said it would be, and charged me £30 less than he said he would. And it was all much cheaper than it would have been had I had to courier my laptop to Sony Europe.
He reminded me of my father, whose working life centred on those satisfying, simple human exchanges of someone anxiously bringing in their radio or television or hi-fi to get fixed, and he knowing how to fix them.
In my week of not plugging in to the world of media, in sticking to personal human contact and avoiding the deadening effect of the collective mind and big corporations, I’ve learned a lot. I still haven’t turned on the television, a week later.
I prefer my brain being alive.