The Bumpy Road

Well, dear readers, I must say the creative process is a humbling one. Every day is an entirely unique beast with its own set of rules, challenges, gifts and inspirations. My job appears to be to ride the waves in whatever size, form, and direction they come and try not to capsize. Resisting what is happening is always bad, I've discovered.

If it is a day racked with internal anxiety and mental vortexes leading nowhere, the best thing appears to be to pick up your sorry back-side and leave the house. (Which is what I did a few days ago...ended up in Montmartre.) These small Parisian flats are not much in the way of inspiring and cabin fever can set in rather quickly. On the other hand, sometimes the relative quiet and solitude of the flat is exactly what I need to let the words flow.

I am discovering that each creative injection – whether it's a new idea for a current project, a new idea for a new project, a particularly illuminating conversation, or miles and miles of contemporary art (say from the Musee D'Orsay) – requires time to assimilate. In a city so full of beauty, sound, movement and unique thought, it is easy to get overwhelmed. I decided today, as I walked along the Seine, that Paris is dangerously beautiful. It can consume you. Bowl you over. Indeed, after spending two-ish hours in the Musee D'Orsay this morning, I felt like I needed not a nap, but a coma.

In her book 'The Artist's Way' (which I will recommend to you over and over and over until you just go read it already), Julia Cameron writes about "filling up the well" – that our well of images, ideas, creative thoughts can get depleted during the course of regular living, not to mention creative work. And as an artist, one has the responsibility to...fill 'er up. Cameron recommends something she calls Artist Dates, doing something fun, silly, creative in order to fill up your well of images and ideas. In Calgary, my artist dates included wandering around Mona Lisa Art Supply. But now, I'm in the city in which the original Mona Lisa hangs for God's sake. It's almost impossible to walk out my door without ideas and images entering my consciousness.

But I suppose that's the thing, sometimes it's too much. And the great challenge is to balance the grand with the simple, the chaotic with the mundane. If I'm staggering along the Seine, drunk out of my mind on art, I'm not much good for getting any work done, am I? So, you learn to relax. You learn to release your expectations. You learn to flow with the directive of the moment.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not justifying the fact that I haven't written in days. I have. It's just not the way I'd imagined. Yesterday, for example was what I'd call a Good Writing Day. I was at my cafe by 9 am, pounding out the prose. The breakfast crowd came and went. I wrote. The truant students came in around 11 to play poker and drink coffee. I wrote. The lunch crowd began to trickle in, then stream in, then flood. I realized I was starving, so I stayed right where I was, ate (ratatouille!) and wrote. By that time, my laptop battery was done and my work was veering off into some strange place. I still don't know if this place is 'inspired' or 'misguided.' We'll see in a bit.

The day before was what I would call a Crap Writing Day. I was wracked with anxiety and self-doubt for pretty much the entire day. I was inexplicably exhausted. I can't even remember what I did in the morning, if anything. I tried reading, but nothing would register. I briefly considered jumping out my window at one point. Not true, but close. Then, weirdly, late in the afternoon, I started writing. It was another one-woman show. This one about God. I was confused and battered from my morning shift of self-loathing. What I was writing had nothing to do with my screenplay. But it was funny! So I kept going. Then, just as I was just sitting down to an absolutely spectacular dinner of roasted chicken, mushroom risotto and salade verte...I got a migraine.

So, besides the occurrence of a mind-splitting headache, what was the difference of the Good Writing Day and the Crap Writing Day? In a word: expectations. In two words: staying present.

Crap Day was crap because I expected myself to be super-productive, smart, funny, brilliant, award-winning, published, successful and gorgeous. Good Day was good because I expected absolutely nothing of myself and went with exactly how I felt.

Crap Day was the day after my dinner with Dana, the fabulously successful artist. During our dinner, she had told me that getting published in France is quite different than in North America: less competitive, less sales driven, more power to the artist as opposed to the publisher. She also told me the story of her career and success. Both of those things made me want. Badly. I wanted to be published in Paris. I wanted to have a success story like Dana's. I want. I want. I want. And suddenly, I am so far out of the present moment, it's ridiculous.

Crap Day was crap because I was clinging to the future. When you write for some possible future (being published, produced, discovered, etc.) it changes things. You overthink. You analyze whether or not that paragraph you just wrote was good enough or smart enough to be published. You imagine yourself on magazine covers. And being interviewed on television about your fabulous book. You try to be too funny, too clever, too cute, rather than arriving to the page clear and open and honest.

Good Day was good because I did just that. For me, the day after a migraine is usually worse than the migraine itself. I'm stupid, clumsy and exhausted. Noise bothers me. I'm a pain in the ass. But, I woke up feeling surprisingly good. I said, okay, we'll go to the cafe and just see. If we just have coffee, that's okay. Take it easy. I arrived to the page completely clean. No expectations, no future-gunk. I felt curious actually. This new idea I'd had was interesting. I wanted to see where it would go next. Writing was interesting and fun and infused with a lovely ease.

Today, I wanted to let that ease inform my choices again, but I think I was a little ambitious. I went to the Musee D'Orsay when it opened. My theory (corroborated by the book 'A Writer's Paris') was that if one arrives at opening, one will beat the crowds and have a vast quiet expanse of beauty at one's fingertips. Not. So. Much.

The line up wound around the entrance and my impulse was to just leave. That a Friday morning would be a completely different beast than a Monday. But I didn't follow the impulse (damn!) and was flanked by teenagers and tourists every step of the way. The teenagers sniggered every time they passed a sculpture of a nude man. Every. Single. Time. The tourists barely looked at the art, just snapped pictures of it. It was, howyousay, less than serene. And it left me too exhausted to do anything.

So, if I were developing a theory, which I love to do, it would be to keep things simple and release your expectations. Arrive. Arrive to your morning and your work with ease and a mild curiosity. Save the ambitious ideas (whether it's getting published or visiting the Louvre) for the afternoon, after you've done your creative work.