What were you doing before the Artists Way. What was your creative/life like?

As a child, I think I must have tried almost every art form at least once. It sounds formulaic, doesn't it: "She got her first camera at the age of nine." But well, I did. As we know from The Artists's Way, being creative is a natural thing - and usually allowed and encouraged in people who are by law not yet allowed very much else. So this is a true account of what my creative life was like before The Artist's Way. At least one version of the truth...

When I was at kindergarten and before that, I finished an average of 3 paintings per day. My grandmother thought that was wonderful because I was so easy to please with just a pen and some paper. Then someone - I think my grandmother again - had the brilliant idea to give a me a little Kodak camera with roll film, so all my pocket money went into buying new rolls of film and taking very moody portraits of our dog running through autumn leaves which took a lot of imagination to actually discern the subject. Being far too tall to become a ballet dancer (a dream that lasted about five minutes into my one and only ballet lesson), I devoted weekends with a friend to dressing up and dancing in her room and inventing all sorts of stories and plot twists to go with the performance. I was a bit at loose ends for a year or so when our school drama group dissolved and I started several novels during that time (most of them reached page two) until at the age of 15, I managed to get a role as an extra at the local university theatre. A few plays - and roles with text - later, I knew that the directing side was what I had really fallen in love with. The acting gave all the thrill of performance, stage fright and a huge boost to the ego, but what I wanted to do was: direct, films. (Who would have guessed, really?) All this could have gone on very nicely, hadn't it been for the fact that suddenly I finished school, was supposedly grown up and needed to turn this into a serious career. 

You can probably tell that my parents - though both suspicious as to whether you could actually make money with making art - were encouraging pretty much everything as long as it didn't seem to ruin my health. (The theatre was a borderline case: too many parties.)

So what did I do when professional choices were required? Apply for one internship at Arri in Munich and for a place at one of the most prestigious German acting school, get rejected at both and I was so frightened off that I promptly enrolled in Archaeology instead. Before the end of the third semester it was obvious that I really wanted to direct sword-and-sandal dramas rather than archives in a museum and I changed to Theatre and Film Studies. Now my creative life could take off for real - or so I thought.

Instead, I started my career as a shadow artist. For further explanation, refer to chapter 8 of The Artist's Way. Academia is really not the place to be creative. I had a wonderful professor who was friends with "amazingly interesting" people, so I got to rub shoulders with some of the hottest directing talents in Berlin at the time, got to organize festivals for other people's media work and theatre performances, which was all very nice - only I wasn't really making films. When students were excluded from the use of the media lab I had helped to build up and the university job seemed to steer dangerously into the PhD direction, I quit - and travelled to Australia.

How did you come across the Artist's Way?

At the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney I sat a while in front of a Brett Whiteley painting, contemplating life, art, and all sorts of other things. After the paintings, I went to the Gallery's bookshop. I browsed a bit here (Chinese Calligraphy) and there (Paper Making) - and there it was. The Artist's Way. The blurb on the back sounded a bit too good to be true. I could answer any and all of the questions with "yes": Yes, I yearn to be more creative but I'm afraid to try. Yes, I know exactly what I want to do but fear I'm making a fool of myself, yes, yes, yes. My mum is a psychologist which is probably the reason for my ingrained scepticism towards self-help books. So - I walked out of the shop without buying it! It took me two more attempts (and two more bookshops) until finally I took the book to the cash register, bought it and carried it home. I tend to think that goes to show just how blocked I really was.

Did it sit on your shelf or did you dive in straight away?

Are you kidding? I started reading it on the bus out of the CBD. I remember it was a Friday and I thought doing the course from Sunday to Sunday was a good idea, so I had to wait for two whole days until I could actually start. That seemed like an awfully long time. But I started Morning Pages the next morning.

What is your life like post Artist's Way?

After I started working through The Artist's Way, I felt like turning my whole life upside down. I was a film director. I knew it. But I had not much apart from a few eclectic short films to prove that fact. All I wanted was get out there, grab a camera and start filming. So why did I finish my MA in Theatre and Film Studies and spend another year at uni? For some very rational reasons: because it was close enough to what I wanted to do anyway and I was close enough to graduating and - yes, I really thought that - it looked good on paper. It still does, gets people every time, the MA. By now, I have realized that what I learned at uni, my knowledge of film history and analytical skills, does pay off. It is an archive to refer to and if I had known this at the time - or had been allowed to let this inspiration turn into personal creative work - I would have been a much happier student. But as it was, I suffered through most of the last MA year. Only the thought that after all this theory I would allow myself to get loads of practice kept me going. Which is what I did post-Master: I enrolled in a film-making course at the New York Film Academy in London which promised you hands-on filmmaking from day 1. I told myself that I was simply doing my film school in two stages: theory first, practice second.

Since then, I have written (and published) two collections of short stories (which did go beyond page 2), have my own photo postcard edition, have gone on to direct and/ or shoot a number of short films, and at the moment I am developing my first feature documentary. In short, though I have finally become a filmmaker, I have also returned to some childhood loves and am back "dabbling" in all sorts of directions. It took me a while to understand (and I still haven't really) that that confuses people. You've "got to focus" on one thing seriously - or so it goes. Fortunately, as you get more experience in your creative life you realize that the creative people you bond with most tend to have more than one passion as well.

In general, I think I have returned to being the person I used to be: sillier and more sincere at the same time, more confident and equally more vulnerable than in my brief "adult" years in academia. It took a big leap to leave the shelter of interpretation and return to the wild forests of creation. But now that I am back, I don't ever want to leave again.

What AW philosophy or techique do you still use?

I write daily Morning Pages, almost every day unless I am ill. I try to do Artist Dates but sometimes struggle to find something that doesn't involve money. (I live on a small Greek island, so "going to an arthouse cinema and watch the latest XYZ"  does involve a ferry ride and a flight already.) In lieu of proper Artist Dates, I try to follow little whims as a daily habit, many of them: when I am logging video footage and after some hours my eyes get tired, I put on music and lie around on the lounge for 15 minutes just letting my mind wander - or I dance until one of the cats gives me a stern look for making too much noise or moving around unpredictably. I also try and walk most days at least a little bit, being alone with myself, my ideas, my dreams. Just in case, The Artist's Way and two other books by Julia Cameron (Vein of Gold and Walking in This World) are never too far from my desk or bedside table, so during the dark nights of the soul (and, yes, they come, but it gets easier to get over them) I can flick through a few pages. I find, only reading a bit of it and remembering what it is about is sometimes like getting a pep talk or letter from a good friend. And, yes, I intend to mention Julia Cameron in my Oscar speech. ;-)

What is the one thing you would really like to tell my readers about being creative?

The ol' slogan: Just do it. There is no point in holding back. There is no reason to be ashamed of anything you try creatively - or in life in general. Shame is really not useful. There is no way you are going to be a genius on day one - though sometimes you might actually surprise yourself with how good you already are, but even then: keep going. It's not about right or wrong, it's about life, living it, making things, communicating what lives in your soul to others. If you have an idea, a whim, an urge, you GOT to follow it in whatever way, you won't be happy before you at least try the waters. If you find them too cold, that's okay. But try it first. And chances are, you will like what you find or get used to the temperature and start to swim.

The second (sorry, I know you only asked for one, but there is a second one): surround yourself with like-minded people. Find soul-mates. It might seem difficult at the start, but the more honest you are with yourself, the more honest (and proud of what you are) you can be with others - and that will attract the right sort of person. So be it!

After studying Classical Archaeology, Egyptology and Early European History German-born filmmaker Sibylle Meder graduated with an MA in Film and Theatre Studies from Freie Universität Berlin and received a Filmmaking Certificate from New York Film Academy London. She has worked as a writer, director and cinematographer on numerous short films which were shown at festivals internationally. Other works include two books of short stories, travel articles for national Australian newspapers, several short volumes of academic texts and photography. She is currently working on her first feature documentary "The Island Bus" (http://islandbus.wordpress.com) which was selected for the Storydoc 2010 Documentary Development Programme and the EDN Docs in Thessaloniki Pitch 2011. You can find more info on her website: www.sibyllemeder.net