Monday, March 1, 2010

Artist's Way - Week Three

Passages from the book that struck me:

Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us. (61)
It's my [Julia Cameron's] experience that we're much more afraid that there might be a God than we are that there might not be. (63)
The criticism that damages is that which disparages, dismisses, ridicules, or condemns. It is frequently vicious but vague and difficult to refute. (69)
Creativity is the only cure for criticism. (73)

Now while this chapter is very helpful about criticism and anger, it does not really discuss the impersonal rejection. I can't remember from the last time I worked through the book whether subsequent chapters shed any light on this, but I hope so. There's nothing in a canned response tersely printed on a 1/4 sheet of paper stuffed in an SASE that might lead to an "Ah-ha!" moment for revising the work. While Cameron admonishes "don't pick up the first doubt," I feel it might be foolishly arrogant to keep getting rejection letters and not consider that (major) revision is in order. But which part to revise? hmmm. I will stay open to advice on this issue.

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