Kimberly O'Connor

Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash

Week 8 is all about strength. Cameron writes, “One of the most difficult tasks an artist must face is a primal one: artistic survival.” She continues, “All artist’s must learn the art of surviving loss: loss of hope, loss of face, loss of money, loss of self-belief.” A lot of The Artist’s Way frolics in the realm of hope, play, and excitement, which are all essential to making art, but week 8 takes some time to consider the other sides of those element: the disappointments, setbacks, and dull periods that are also hallmarks of an artistic life.

I have some experience with artistic disappointment. I sent off my book White Lung over 90 times over the span of over 10 years before it was accepted by Saturnalia Books in 2019. That means from about 2009 to the moment in July, 2019 when I got the call letting me know Saturnalia wanted to publish my book, I got over 90 rejections, all in the form of an email in some variations of this:

Thank you for sending us your manuscript. We regret to inform you….

In short, it sucked. But, I got tough. I learned tenacity. Also, I revised the book roughly one million times. I took out poems, put in new ones, printed out all the poems and rearranged them, using the span of the house as an outline. I changed the title. I kept sending it off.

White Lung circa 2017, with Suki the cat, who always helped

Cameron says, “Gain disguised as loss is a potent artist’s tool. To acquire it, simply, brutally, ask: How can this loss serve me? Where does it point my work? The answers will surprise and liberate you.”

The early versions of my book were safe and pretty. The version of my book that got accepted was terrifying and honest. That’s not an accident. Every year the book wasn’t published was a year I mined closer to the core of what it was I really wanted and needed to say.

This chapter on artistic strength is filled with other great stuff too: the dangers of academia, the illusion that you are ever too old to be creative. And the weekly exercises are some of my favorites. One of them asks you to take one small step, today, that serves your art. What might that step be for you? I’ll close with one of the quotations that live in the margins of every page of The Artist’s Way:

Trust that still, small voice that says, “This might work, and I’ll try it.“

–Diane Mariechild