The Artist's Way

“Mmm.” It is as though we want to believe God can create
the subatomic structure but is clueless when faced with how
to aid or fix our painting, sculpture, writing, film.
I recognize that many will balk at the simplicity of this
concept. “God doesn’t run the movie business,” we want to
say. “CAA docs.” I want to sound a cautionary note here for
all artists who put their creative lives into solely human
hands. This can block your good.
The desire to be worldly, sophisticated, and smart often
blocks our flow. We have ideas and opinions about where
our good should come from. As a Hollywood screenwriter, I
had many rueful conversations with other screenwriters
about the fact that while our agents were often invaluable,
we seemed to get an awful lot of breaks from places like
“my next door neighbor,” “my dentist’s brother,” or
“somebody my wife went to college with.” Those breaks are
God the source in action.
I have said before that creativity is a spiritual issue. Any
progress is made by leaps of faith, some small and some
large. At first, we may want faith to take the first dance
class, the first step toward learning a new medium. Later, we
may want the faith and the funds for further classes,
seminars, a larger work space, a year’s sabbatical. Later still,
we may conceive an idea for a book, an artists’ collective
gallery space. As each idea comes to us, we must in good
faith clear away our inner barriers to acting on it and then,
on an outer level, take the concrete steps necessary to
trigger our synchronous good.