Week 9: How Self-Compassion & 'Creative U-Turns' Can Heal Your Writing
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Hello, my lovely readers at MsBrowns, and welcome to my little corner of our AllAboutBooks family! It’s NotesOnDawn here (you might know me as NotesOnDawn from YouTube), and I am so pleased to be sharing a page from my personal journal with you all.
As many of you know, I’ve been on a profound journey with Julia Cameron’s "The Artist's Way". This week, I’ve been wading through the deep, gentle, and sometimes surprisingly turbulent waters of Week 9, which carries the main theme: Recovering a Sense of Compassion.
My recent vlog was a reflection of this—less of a structured guide and more of a chill, diary-style entry about what this theme has stirred up for me. It’s been a week of profound realisations, set against a backdrop of salty air, blooming flowers, and the warmth of family and friends. If you’re feeling creatively stuck, or just in need of a moment of healing, I hope my reflections here can offer you a soft place to land.
This journey is all about healing, and for writers, for any creative soul, compassion is not just a luxury; it’s the main tool in our kit.
Amazon UK - The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
The Seaside and the "Creative U-Turn"
The week’s explorations began at the seaside. There’s something about the vastness of the ocean that demands perspective. As I stood at the water's edge, feeling the pull of the tide, I thought about the relentless rhythm of creativity. It ebbs and it flows. We are so often taught to value only the flow—the furious typing, the pages filling up, the story hurtling towards its conclusion. But what about the ebb? The moments of retreat, of quiet, of feeling utterly lost?
This brings me to a concept that has been sitting with me all week: the "creative U-turn."
What is a creative U-turn? For me, it’s that heart-sinking moment when you are 20,000 words into a manuscript and realise... you’ve taken a wrong turn. The character arc is flat. The plot is a dead end. The entire premise, which you loved so dearly, just isn’t working.
My old self, the pre-Artist’s Way Dawn, would have called this 'failure'. I would have berated myself for the wasted time, the lack of foresight, the sheer stupidity. I would have let that inner critic—that cruel, relentless voice—take the driver’s seat. And that critic would have likely driven me to abandon the project entirely, slamming the laptop shut and declaring myself a fraud.
But Week 9 is about compassion.
What if that "wrong turn" wasn't wrong at all? What if, as the prompt for this week suggests, we could embrace these U-turns as "opportunities for growth"?
Standing on that beach, I realised a U-turn is not an admission of failure; it’s an act of courage. It’s the artist within you saying, "This isn't true enough. Let's go back and find a truer path." It requires you to be brave enough to delete 20,000 words. It requires you to be humble enough to admit you don't have all the answers. And it requires immense self-compassion to do so without self-flagellation.
That U-turn is where the real story is found. The 'wasted' 20,000 words? They weren't wasted. They were the necessary journey to discover what didn't work. They were the scaffolding. You don't get angry at the scaffolding for not being the building. You thank it for its service and take it down.
Compassion, in this context, is the practise of thanking the scaffolding. It's the practise of looking at your 'failed' draft and saying, "Thank you for teaching me what this story is not." It’s about trusting that the new direction, the one that feels scary and uncertain, is where the magic lies. The sea doesn't apologise for its ebb tide. It simply pulls back, gathers its strength, and returns. As writers, we must learn to give ourselves that same, judgement-free permission.
Nature's Compassionate Mirror: From Seagulls to Gardens
My journey this week wasn’t just at the coast. I found myself in the chaotic, flapping midst of a "seagull battle" on the beach, a frantic, noisy squabble over a chip. It was messy and loud and a bit ridiculous. And then, I found myself in the curated peace of the botanical gardens.
The contrast was striking. Nature is both the raucous seagull and the delicate, tended rose. It is wild and it is peaceful. And in all of its forms, it is utterly devoid of judgement.
As I wandered through the botanical gardens, I felt a profound sense of calm. A flower doesn't bloom and then worry if it’s "good enough". It doesn't compare its colour to the flower next to it. It doesn’t rush its own unfolding. It simply exists, rooted in the earth, turning towards the sun.
For creatives, this is perhaps the most vital lesson nature can teach us. We are so steeped in a world of comparison, of metrics, of five-star reviews and rejection letters. We forget that the act of creating is, in itself, a natural process. It has its own seasons. There is a time for planting the seed (the idea), a time for quiet germination (the percolation), a time for pushing through the soil (the messy first draft), and a time for blooming (the final piece).
You cannot shout at a seed to make it grow faster. You cannot critique a bud into blossoming. It needs nurturing: water, soil, sunlight.
Our creativity is the same. When we are blocked, when we are filled with self-doubt, our instinct is often to get harder on ourselves. To force it. To sit at the desk and "bleed", as the old adage goes. But what if the answer isn't force, but nourishment? What if the answer is compassion?
What if, instead of criticising the bud for not being a flower, we simply gave it what it needed? For me, that day, it was the quiet, sun-dappled paths of the gardens. It was the permission to just be, to wander without a goal, to simply absorb the beauty. This is what fuels our creativity: filling the well. Nature is the ultimate well-filler, because it gives without asking, and it models a state of being that is free from the very self-consciousness that plagues our creative lives.
Recovering Fun: A Radical Act of Inner Child Healing
This brings me to one of the most challenging and transformative parts of this week: let’s talk about fun.
Yes, fun. That simple, three-letter word that feels almost frivolous when set against the 'serious business' of writing. In the video's description, I mentioned "inner child healing," and this is where it truly comes to the forefront.
Most of us have an 'inner child'—that part of us that is spontaneous, joyous, curious, and just wants to play. And for many of us, especially those driven to create, that child was told to be quiet, to be productive, to stop daydreaming, to 'grow up'. We learned to equate our worth with our output.
The Artist's Way champions the 'Artist Date'—a weekly, solo expedition to do something just for fun. To take your inner child out and spoil it.
This week, I leaned into that. Hard. I went to the botanical gardens for fun. Not to take notes for a story, not to find a metaphor, but just to be. And it was revolutionary.
But the real test came with the "summer evening," the "Hans 23rd birthday" party, the BBQs. These moments of pure, uncomplicated connection. My old self would have seen these as 'distractions' from my writing time. I'd be the person at the party, physically present but mentally editing a chapter in my head, feeling guilty for every moment I wasn't 'working'.
This week, I practised being present. I practised laughing without thinking it was a waste of time. I practised connecting with my family and friends, not as 'networking' or 'gathering material', but simply as a human being who needs connection.
This is an act of profound self-compassion. It’s a way of telling that inner child: "You are allowed to play. Your joy is important. You are more than just your productivity."
And guess what? When you give yourself permission to have real fun, your creativity doesn't suffer. It explodes. You come back to the page not depleted, but refilled. You have new energy, new perspectives, new ideas that bubble up from a place of joy, not a place of grim duty. Healing your inner child by allowing it to play is not a detour from the creative path; it is the path.
The Compassion of Community
This leads directly to my final, great realisation of the week: creativity is not a solitary sport.
We romanticise the writer, don't we? The lone genius, locked away in an attic, tortured and brilliant, shunning the world.
What a damaging, lonely myth.
This week, hosting summer BBQs, celebrating a birthday, and reconnecting with family, I was reminded of the profound, restorative power of community. When you are deep in a creative U-turn, wrestling with a block, or just feeling the sting of self-doubt, isolation is your worst enemy. That's when the inner critic gets the loudest, because there are no other voices to drown it out.
Community is the counter-balance. It is the real-world anchor that stops you from floating away on a tide of self-critical thought. It is the friend who listens to you despair over your plot-hole and then makes you laugh so hard you forget it for an hour. It is the family member who reminds you of who you are beyond your writing.
Fuelling our creativity is not just about solitary artist dates. It’s also about connection. It's about shared meals and silly conversations and being part of something bigger than your own head. These moments of connection are deposits in the creative bank. They are the human experiences that give our writing texture, and truth, and heart.
Being compassionate with yourself, therefore, also means giving yourself permission to not be the lone genius. It means admitting you need people. It means understanding that stepping away from the desk to be with your loved ones is as much a part of the 'writing process' as time spent at the keyboard.
Compassion in Practise: My Tips for the Tender-Hearted Writer
So, as promised, how do we turn these realisations into practical tips? How does "self-compassion" actually help us overcome creative blocks and self-doubt?
For me, it boils down to these practises:
Re-name the "U-Turn": The next time you have to delete a chapter or change course, do not call it a 'failure'. Call it a 're-direction', a 'discovery', or a 'brave pivot'. Thank the old words for the lesson and let them go with kindness.
Schedule Unstructured Fun: Put an 'Artist Date' in your calendar this week. A solo trip to a gallery, the seaside, a bookshop, the woods. The only rule? You are not allowed to have a goal. You are only allowed to follow your curiosity.
Listen to the "I Want": Check in with your inner child. When you feel blocked, ask yourself, "What would be fun right now?" The answer might be 'go for a walk', 'bake a cake', 'watch a silly film', or 'doodle'. Do that thing. It’s not procrastination; it’s refuelling.
Find Your "Non-Judgemental Mirror": Go to nature. When you feel worthless, go and sit by a tree. When you feel untalented, go and watch the clouds. Let the simple, non-critical being of the natural world remind you that you, too, are allowed to just be, without constantly proving your worth.
Phone a Friend: When you are in a spiral of self-doubt, do not isolate. Call a friend. Go to that BBQ. Have a cup of tea with your mum. Connection is the antidote to the critic's poison.
Conclusion: The Compassionate Creator
This week's journey through "Recovering a Sense of Compassion" has been gentle, but it has been profound. It’s a shift from a mindset of 'production' to a mindset of 'process'. It’s about understanding that our creativity is not a machine we can brutalise into working; it’s a living, tender part of us. It’s a part of us that needs healing, that needs play, that needs nature, and that needs connection.
Living The Artist's Way is teaching me that self-compassion is the ink. Without it, the well runs dry, and the page stays blank.
So, be kind to yourself today. Take yourself to the seaside, even if only in your imagination. Forgive yourself for your 'U-turns'. Go and do something just for fun. Your writing, your art, and your soul will thank you for it.
Thank you for letting me share my diary with you.
With so much warmth,
NotesOnDawn