Reminders for myself

There will be many times when we won’t look good - to ourselves or anyone else. We need to stop demanding that we do. It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.

In order to be an artist, I must:

Show up at the page. Use the page to rest, to dream, to try.

Set small and gentle goals and meet them.

Remember that it is far harder and more painful to be a blocked artist than it is to do the work.

Remember that it is my work to do the work, not judge the work.

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The refusal to acknowledge our creativity had its payoffs. We could wonder and worry about our arrogance instead of being humble enough to ask help to move through our fear. We could fantasize about art instead of doing the work. We could proceed to righteously ignore our creativity and never have to take the risks of fulfilling it.

By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to BE an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

…one of the most annoying things about God is that he never just touches you with his magic wand, like Glinda The Good, and gives you what you want. Like it would be much skin off his nose. But he might give you the courage or the stamina to write lots and lots of terrible first drafts, and then you’d learn that good second drafts can spring from t

Leap, and the net will appear.

- The Artists Way

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

- Brenda Ueland