My Artist's Date

I'm working my way through Julia Cameron's Walking in This World, a follow-up to her popular The Artist's Way. Both books are about celebrating your inner artist through inspiration, motivation, and getting to the work.

Daily Morning Pages are a cornerstone of this philosophy. The idea is to write three pages first thing in the morning, in long hand, in order to clean your mind of the clutter and distractions that often feed into a creative person's procrastination problems. I've tried using a laptop but that method doesn't have the mind, hand, words connection - it's not quite the organic experience that's important to the Morning Pages. But after three days I've discovered that I need a fatter more comfortable pen for my cranky arthritic thumb and fingers to grasp.

Hence the Artist's Date, another cornerstone of Julia Cameron's method. It's a way to fill the creative well in a small way and once a week to do something nice for yourself, by yourself. So, in search of a fatter pen or at least one of those squishy fat things you can wrap around the pen to make gripping it more comfortable, I took myself to Target.

Okay, I had some other things to pick up and granted, 4 pm on a Friday is not the most relaxing time to visit a SuperStore. But that's exactly what I did. I got my other choices out of the way and wove a path over to the office supplies aisle. It was a good thing I didn't go to Office Depot or Office Max, I love those stores like some women like jewelry stores. I found plenty of choices in writing implements in just one aisle. No squishy things to surround the tube of my pen, but pencils galore. Mechanical pencils, both fancy and throw-away, pencils that needed sharpening along with an array of sharpeners, all sorts, sizes and colors of erasers, and finally - ink pens.

No fountain pens but just about every other size, color, and type. From clickable felt tips to ball points to gels. If I'd been at an art store I would have been able to try out anything and everything. But I could see that the lines at the check out lanes were lengthening. Then I saw it. An eight pack of gel pens. Not just any gel pens, but eight different colors of sparkly gel pens with built in squishy things already installed on each pen. Happiness at just a little over fifty cents per pen.

Will these sparkly pens make the works flow more freely across the page? The colors are happier than plain blue or black. Maybe my works will be more positive, get their own sparkle back.

Haw about you? What kind of Artist's Date appeals to you? I'm off to sparkle but I look forward to reading your ideas.