“Enjoyment of my own creativity gives me the gift of enjoying other people’s creativity”
Dubbed ‘The Queen of Change’, Julia Cameron writes best-selling books built on a lifetime’s experience, which ignite the spark of people the world over “The book feels like the firm but kind talking to you need from your favourite bohemian English teache
If you haven’t read The Artist’s Way, chances are you know someone who has. Developing a cult following when it was published in the early 90s, it jumped back onto the bestsellers list again post pandemic, as people rethought their priorities and purpose, and has inspired people ranging from Reese Witherspoon to Elizabeth Gilbert. The book was drawn from author Julia Cameron’s own experience – and created from her wish to give people a pathway to access their own creativity.
FINDING HER WAY
Now 75, Julia says that her creative spark was awoken age 14, growing up in Chicago as one of seven children, and it was thanks to her parents. “They both wrote and encouraged all of us to be creative,” she says. Tellingly, all of her siblings are “musicians, painters or writers.”
At 23, she began writing a style column for The Washington Post, where she faced her initial impostor syndrome “I’d write columns, drive to the newspaper and all the way there I’d think, ‘they won’t let me in, they’ll think I’m too young!’” she recalls. How did she overcome that? Simply “practise,” she says.
Julia moved on to writing for Rolling Stone – and, after interviewing director Martin Scorsese for a piece, she ended up marrying him and helping with the script for Taxi Driver. Though the marriage didn’t last, she continued to hop from one genre of writing to another, producing plays, screenplays and poetry. She resists the idea that writers should stick to one lane, and
‘write what you know.’ “I don’t think that does writers any good – we should write what we feel like writing.”
This experimentation led to what would become The Artist’s Way. She was teaching a course to help creative friends get “unstuck”, and she compiled the tricks and techniques she developed into a book that she thought might help others, too. When The Artist’s Way was first turned down by a publisher, Julia photocopied her own type-written pages herself, and sold them through a bookshop. From these humble beginnings, it’s gone on to find some five million practitioners today. The word ‘practitioners’ there is key. It’s not a passive read; it’s a series of exercises, intended to be completed over the course of 12 weeks, active ways to build creativity into your routine. The same is true of her new book, Write for Life (Souvenir Press), released some 30 years on, which shares lessons hard-won from a lifetime of writing. The book feels like the firm but kind talking to you need from your favourite bohemian English teacher: charting the ups and downs of creative life, including rejection, procrastination and the enemy that is perfectionism. The book reinforces much of what made The Artist’s Way famous, including ‘Morning Pages’ and the ‘Artist Date’ exercises (more on those later), pillars of Julia’s lifelong practice.
HAND TO HEART
Most importantly, you don’t have to consider yourself an artist or a writer to gain from Julia’s methods.
She believes, “All writing is good writing,” and just as importantly, “writing leads to writing.” Julia regularly hand-writes notecards to her friends, posting them in batches of eight. The often referenced ‘Morning Pages’ involves writing, longhand, three pages every morning
as soon as you get up. Not a diary, more a stream of consciousness, Julia swears this is necessary to turn over the details of our lives and get creative juices flowing. She says it prompts action, making it a good starting point, if you’re looking to reignite your creativity – from there, she’s found “people quickly slip into working on other projects.”
And whether notecards or Morning Pages, it’s the writing by hand that Julia believes is an integral part of the process. “I’m more connected to my heart, whereas writing on the computer I’d often whizz past an important part,” she says. “I think writing by hand leads you from thought to thought, you write more comprehensively, at the same pace as your thoughts.”
In fact, her ideas have always been based around slowing down and giving yourself space to think, even before the birth of social media. The ‘Artist Date’ is simply a weekly solitary date – taking time to go by yourself somewhere – your local bookshop, to a gallery or a museum, or just to your local park. In Julia’s case, one of her favourite ever Artist Dates was to a pet store. “They’d a giant bunny named George who the owner let me pet,” she recalls. “That awakened my sense of touch; stroking his silky coat I found myself thinking, it’s a wonderful world, just look at George…”
THE DISCIPLINE DISCIPLES
Julia’s commitment to creativity is intrinsic to how she structures her life. She has set up different ‘stations’ that she works from throughout her home in New Mexico; some outdoors, some at windows with magnificent views. Since publishing The Artist’s Way, Julia says she’s learned the importance of exercise, particularly daily walks. But here’s the »
more challenging part – as with her loyalty to writing by hand, she insists that you should go for your walks without the distractions of headphones, audiobooks, music or podcasts. This relates to one of her most successful prescriptions: complete media deprivation. “People say to me, ‘Julia you’re so productive, you’re writing a book a year, how do you do it?’” The answer (though you might not want to hear it) is simple: “I don’t watch television, I stay off social media. Media deprivation is a very powerful tool. They’ll come back to me and say, ‘I was full of ideas I didn’t know I had!’” Sometimes, even more drastic methods are required: With a friend, “who confessed she wanted to be a composer but didn’t have the nerve,” Julia “locked her in a room with a piano and, as soon as she heard the bolt slide in the door, she started hearing music!”
There can be a tendency to think of creativity as a gift awarded to a select few – and great ideas coming fully formed, like a lightning bolt. Instead, Julia says, it’s about building the framework to support it: a combination of inspiration and discipline. And that, Julia has found, carries over into all aspects of her life. “The discipline I find in writing Morning Pages brings me discipline in my relationships, sending notecards and calling friends,” she says. Her methods are low cost and low risk – it’s just down to us to commit. “The tools have worked for millions of people,” she says. “Trust them.” After all, there’s a reason why The New York Times called her ‘The Queen of Change’. “People will approach me and say, ‘Your book changed my life,’” Julia says. “It feels wonderful to know I’ve been a stepping stone to someone else’s creativity.”
High profile fans aside, she’s no creativity snob; she’s just as delighted when someone approaches her to say how her work helped them make their own jewellery or start a podcast. “My enjoyment of my own creativity gives me the gift of enjoying other people’s creativity,” she says. It’s easy to wish we all had a motivational friend like Julia Cameron, but in reading her books we can benefit from the next best thing – and then perhaps extend that hand of support to others, too.
Write For Life by Julia Cameron (Souvenir Press) is out now