I exit the subway at Waverly Place, elbowing my way through the other weary Friday night commuters onto 6th Avenue. On my way to the Greenwich Village’s Tony Dapolito Recreation Center ($75 a year and you get what you pay for – ie, bring a sturdy lock), I look at the marquee on the IFC Center, the Independent Film Channel’s fancy flagship cinema. “The New Talkies: Generation D.I.Y.” That’s, wait, yes, that festival of those new filmmakers, the ‘Mumblecore’ filmmakers…micro-budgeted films…what I was reading about in this morning in the paper…there’s a 7:20pm showing of Hannah Takes the Stairs, that’s that guy’s movie about…Hannah!

Now I’m getting elbowed as I waffle on the sidewalk. It’s Friday night, which leaves me two more days to shoehorn my weekly ‘artist date’ into my over-scheduled New York teach/work/study/date/errands weekend.

Ok, Winters (when I talk to myself I like to pretend I’m a football coach). It’s now or never. Are you gonna wear your frumpy sweats and get on the broken treadmill and hope no one steals your shoes out of your locker? Or are you gonna duck into this theater and see what the hell happens?

***

Artist dates are one of the two cornerstone activities, along with the morning pages (the task of writing three pages of whatever’s on your mind, ideally before one gets out of bed) of Julia Cameron’s 1992 best-seller The Artist’s Way. Subtitled ‘A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity,’ the book is a twelve-week “course in discovering and recovering your creative self.” Cameron defines an artist date as “a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers.”

That Friday evening in August 2007 my inner football coach was able to convince me to take my inner artist to the movies. Luckily, my big plan of plan of gym/thaw salmon/eat salmon/catch up on filing while 20/20 plays on the TV in the background receded, and I sat in the theater watching two hours of a self-centered, attractive young woman try to get a hold on her career while meandering through two ill-fated romances. The unrecognizable cast impressed me with its moment-to-moment acting, and the filmmaker did the same by striking a studied yet casual tone that authentically evoked the lives and loves of privileged, (over-?) educated 20-somethings. Most surprisingly, I saw a young woman negotiate her romantic power with the brand of narcissism, pain, and humor I recognized in my friends and myself but had never come close to seeing portrayed in a contemporary American movie.

At the post-screening Q & A I listened to the director, Joe Swanberg, talk about his immersing, improvisatory methods. I approached him afterward and asked if I could send him my work, which I then did Monday. Whatever this connection would or would not yield, I left the theater exhilarated. Independent film had thus far been the most fulfilling part of my career, but largely due to my training background and my agency, I almost exclusively auditioned for theater. The film directors I had worked with had left New York or were working in documentary, and I didn’t know how I could reconnect my acting to the genre. As uncomfortable as it was to approach Mr. Swanberg, I felt as though reaching out was somehow my way of building a bridge to the next part of my career.

***

I discovered The Artist’s Way in the late 90s. The book was, in fact, impossible to miss. It seemed as though an opened copy could be found on every subway car. The aisles of my corner Barnes and Noble were clogged with sad-looking people frantically copying the exercises into notebooks. Fliers for group workshops for Artist’s Way courses sprung up on every coffee house bulletin board.

Its omnipresence alienated me, however. How could a book that everyone is reading possibly address the complexity of my creative disappointments/struggles/hopes? Besides, I thought, I’m constantly creating; I don’t need ‘creative recovery’ – I need a better agent!

But while I was certainly busy performing, auditioning, and taking class, aspects of my creative life were destroying me. Giving a mediocre audition would result in hours of self-immolation that made it that much harder to pursue the next opportunity; my overwhelming need for approval made it difficult to ask my directors for specific feedback on a part for fear I’d find they were unhappy with me; and I began to notice that my hands would go numb at the top of my emotional arc in scenes in class or on stage. I was 22 years old and I knew these issues were not the makings of a sustainable career. Could The Artist’s Way help?

I don’t remember if a specific acting crisis or recommendation finally convinced me to plunk down my $13.95, but by the time I headed off to school at American Conservatory Theater later that year (where Jeff Crockett’s voice classes eradicated the numb hands) the voices that had kept me curled up in bed after ‘failing’ another audition were finding their way onto the morning pages. There, on the page, I began to separate myself from them, and I begin to see past them.

***

My commitment to the morning pages has stayed fairly constant through the intervening decade, which the boxes of yellowing notebooks I cart from new apartment to new apartment can attest to. I can feel the benefit of the daily ‘brain drain’ practice immediately. On the few days I skip them I notice that I feel somewhat unmoored and am more likely to buy candy and US Weekly and just be plain crabby (smart boyfriends quickly learn that leaving me alone for the 20 minutes I need to do the morning pages is a great investment in having a fight-free rest-of-day).

But my commitment to artist dates has had its ups and downs, which, says the book, is not unusual.

“You are likely to find yourself avoiding your artist dates,” writes Cameron. “Recognize this resistance as a fear of intimacy – self-intimacy. Often in troubled relationships, we settle into an avoidance pattern with our significant others. We don’t want to hear what they are thinking because it just might hurt… It is probable that these self-disclosures, frightening through they are, will lead to the building of a real relationship, one in which the participants are free to be who they are and to become what they wish…In order to have a real relationship with our creativity, we must take the time and care to cultivate it. Our creativity will use this time to confront us, to confide in us, to bond with us, and to plan…(through our artist date) we begin to fund the creative reserves we will draw on in fulfilling our artistry.”

***

When I arrived home from Hannah Takes the Stairs I pored over the filmographies of everyone in the movie and other notable “Mumblecore” filmmakers. I discovered that Andrew Bujalski, who played Hannah’s work-obsessed paramour, had directed and starred in Mutual Appreciation, another movie I had “ducked into” on another artist date a year before when it was playing in NYC’s Cinema Village. My plan that night had been to peruse the racks at the now-gone Tower records in Union Square when I saw the movie’s poster as I was walking along 12th Street. I hadn’t heard of it, which was kind of weird, especially since, according to the poster, it was about people my age and had earned a handful of superlatives from my favorite critics.

The movie is in black and white (!) and shot on real honest-to-goodness film (!). Similar to Hannah…, Mutual Appreciation anatomizes the love lives of educated young urbanites. Central is the relationship of Ellie and Lawrence, two academic types, that’s threatened by the appearance of Lawrence’s musician friend Alan. It’s Ellie, though, who seems to be quietly holding the cards. As I watch her and Lawrence gently, and smartly, talk through their relationship, I see a new expression of my generation on film, I see a young woman of strength and strategy, I see something to seek.

***

When I do manage to take artist dates (and I’ve never regretted the time ‘lost’ to one – I have certainly regretted the reverse) I connect the dots between my memories and my present; I remember my past and let bottled-up regrets and desires surface; I allow myself to follow curiosities and indulge in amusements I normally “don’t have time for.”

In her post last week, career coach Dallas Travers discusses the importance of setting daily office hours to perform the tasks that build and maintain the momentum of our business. Likewise, I believe our creative careers can benefit as enormously from setting the “artist hours” of a weekly artist date. While many of us partake in lots of creative play throughout the week with friends, family, and colleagues, the solitude of the artist date might be the only time we have in a week to move through the world adhering to our own artistic vision. It’s the time when we disengage from others’ agendas for our creative careers, when the burdens of “shoulds” and to-do lists quiet down and enable us to nurture our singular creative voice.

Fiction writer Ginny Wiehardt, who is the Guide to Fiction Writing at About.com, points out another creative advantage artist dates afford us: how time spent focusing on others’ works positively informs our own. “When I was writing the first draft of my novel, I took myself on an artist date, generally to an art museum or a play, almost every week. When I revise the book now, I’m struck by the diversity of images and concerns that run through the work. For that richness, I very much credit my artist dates. They got me out of my head on a regular basis and allowed me to spend time grappling with the work of other artists.”

***

Over a year ago I read in the trades that Andrew Bujalski had been hired to adapt and direct the screen version of Benjamin Kunkel’s novel Indecision. I had read the novel a couple of years earlier and had been seriously excited by how well-drawn all the female characters were, especially the protagonist’s sister, Alice Wilmerding, a lonely young Anthropology professor. When I read of the Bujalski hire, light bulbs went off! I thought he was an inspired choice to give voice to the hyper-educated Wilmerdings, given his skill maintaining the momentum of the intellectual dialogue in Mutual Appreciation.

Soon after, as I had moved to LA in the midst of the writers’ strike, it became clear to me that I’d be left to my own devices to come up with a serious acting assignment (it also became clear that there were already a bunch of actors in LA (who knew?!) and I’d have to take my place in a very long line). Thinking on the ‘D.I.Y.’ Mumblecore (which, by the way, is the nickname given this unofficial movement due to its characters’ softly-said, often late-night confessions) aesthetic, I thought maybe Mr. Bujalski would be open to receiving a homemade Alice Wilmerding audition tape. And since my encounter with his colleague Joe Swanberg had yielded Facebook friendship, maybe I could actually get him the tape. Despite my then-manager’s saying, “Don’t bother – they’ll give it to Amy Adams,” I knew I had nothing to lose by working on great material.

Well, as you may have figured from reading the length of my blog posts, the ten-minute audition tape grew into eight hours of shot digital video. I became more interested in what happened to this incredibly self-defeating, funny, and complex character after her last appearance in the book than in dramatizing the scenes from it, and I thankfully had a few friends willing to help indulge my curiosity.

***

Last May, I was stalled after spending evening after evening wading through the footage on my computer. How could I ever make something of it?

A spontaneous artist date would provide the respite and inspiration for the next phase in a work whose seeds were planted on an artist date two years prior, on that Friday night on the way to the gym.

Temping at UCLA, I realized my badge could get me into The Hammer Museum for free. I headed over to see 9 Lives: Visionary Works from LA, an exhibition of nine California artists. Seeing how these artists organized their work, I became so inspired/agitated/encouraged that I only made it to Life 7 before rushing home to chip away at the organization of mine.

Eventually I had the good sense to hire coach Dyana Valentine to help me hire an editor (hey, you gotta do what you gotta do) and we’ve made 8 small films, ‘labs’ of Ms. Wilmerding. I’ve recently applied for a grant to get the funds to design a website to house them.

I still hit a lot of resistance with this project. What societal good is it? Who could stand to watch me for, like, 40 minutes? Have I lost my mind? Why don’t I pack it in and train for another career, etc. etc. But it is, interestingly, something that I wrote in my morning pages in the midst of looking through all that footage that tells me to keep making time to work on it when paying the bills, running a website, and everything else seems so much more important – “working on this project makes me happier than I’ve ever been.”

You can purchase The Artist’s Way here.

Read Ginny Wiehardt’s article on revisitng The Artist’s Way after seven years.

Take Kelly Morgan’s Artist’s Way Workshop in Los Angeles.

Visit The Artist’s Way official website.

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