Julia Cameron - The right to write: an invitation and initiation into the writing life

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Table of Contents

ALSO BY JULIA CAMERON

NONFICTION
The Artists Way
The Artists Way Morning Pages Journal
The Artists Date Book
(Illustrated by Elizabeth Libby Cameron)
The Vein of Gold
God is No Laughing Matter
Supplies
(Illustrated by Elizabeth Libby Cameron)
God is Dog Spelled Backwards
Heart Steps
Blessings
Transitions
The Artists Way at Work
(with Mark Bryan and Catherine Allen)
Money Drunk, Money Sober
(with Mark Bryan)

FICTION
The Dark Room
Popcorn: Hollywood Stories

PLAYS
Public Lives
The Animal in the Trees
Four Roses
Love in the DMZ
Avalon (a musical)
The Medium at Large (a musical)

POETRY
Prayers for the Little Ones
Prayers for the Nature Spirits
The Quiet Animal

This Earth (also an album with Tim Wheater)

FEATURE FILM

Gods Will

Acknowledgments

I AM INDEBTED TO
Mark Bryan
The Camerons
Sonia Choquette
Michelle Esrick
Rhonda Flemming
Roland Flint
Joel Fotinos
Natalie Goldberg
Sister Julia Clare Greene, BVM
Erin Greenberg
David Groff
Gerard Hackett
Arthur Kretchmer
Laura Leddy
Emma Lively
Larry Lonergan
Ellen Longo
Michele Lowrance
Julianna McCarthy
William McPherson
James Nave
John Newland
John Nichols
Will Nix
David Saltz
Susan Schulman
Domenica Cameron Scorsese
Max Showalter
Roger Slakey
Martha Hamilton Snyder
Johanna Tani
Jeremy Tarcher
Martin Torgoff
Edmund Towle
Dori Vinella
Tim Wheater
Aura Wright

FOR MY WRITING MOTHER,
DOROTHY SHEA CAMERON

INTRODUCTION

IN DECEMBER 1967, under the baleful gaze of a gargoyle high in an upper cranny of Georgetown Library, I came across a line from the poet Theodore Roethke. He wrote, I learn by going where I have to go. That phrase accurately describes my writing life.

Ive written since I was very young and, as I get older, I write more and more frequently, in more and more genres. I have written fiction and nonfiction, films, plays, poems, essays, criticism, journalism, and even musicals. I have written for love, for money, for escape, for grounding, to tune out, to tune in, and to do almost anything that writing could be made to do.

Writing has for thirty-plus years been my constant companion, my lover, my friend, my job, my passion, and what I do with myself and the world I live in. Writing is how, and it sometimes seems why, I do my life.

My story is simple: I simply write. I have tried, in this book, to write only about the things I know, only about the things that have been my tools, my path. This means that there are many things that will not be included in this book because they are either not a part of my writers experience or they are something other books on writing have written about very well.

This book will not teach you how to write a query letter, how to find a market for your work or get an agent. It will not teach you to punctuate or spell. Anton Chekhov advised actors, If you want to work on your acting, work on yourself. This same advice applies to working on our writing.

Our writing life, our life as a writer, cannot be separated from our life as a whole. For this reason, many of the essays and especially the tools in this book about writing may, at first flush, seem to have nothing to do with writingbut they have everything to do with writing. Think of each essay as an invitation to explore a certain area. Think of each tool as an experiential initiation into that area.

What this book will do, if I have done it well enough, is talk to you about writing for the sake of writing, for the sheer unadulterated joy of putting words to the page. In other words, this is less a how-to book than a why book.

Why should we write?

We should write because it is human nature to write. Writing claims our world. It makes it directly and specifically our own. We should write because humans are spiritual beings and writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance as well.

We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

We should write, above all, because we are writers whether we call ourselves writers or not. The Right to Write is a birthright, a spiritual dowry that gives us the keys to the kingdom. Higher forces speak to us through writing. Call them inspiration, the Muses, Angels, God, Hunches, Intuition, Guidance, or simply a good storywhatever you call them, they connect us to something larger than ourselves that allows us to live with greater vigor and optimism.

It is my hope that this book will dismantle some of the negative mythology that surrounds the writing life in our culture. I have found that life to be positive, invigorating, spiritually sourced, and eminently do-able. This book, therefore, will be an into the water book as we look at common blocks and some simple ways around them, common problems and some simple ways to solve them, common sticking points and some simple ways through them. In my experience, the writing life is a simple life, self-empowered and self-empowering.

This book will be a cheerleader for those trying the writing life, a companion for those living it, and a thank-you to my own writing for the life it has given to me. It is my hope that this book will help to heal writers who are broken, initiate writers who are afraid, and entice writers who are standing at rivers edge, wanting to put a toe in.

I have a fantasy. Its the pearly gates. St. Peter has out his questionnaire, he asks me the Big Question, What did you do that we should let you in?

I convinced people they should write, I tell him. The great gates swing open.

BEGIN

I AM SITTING AT a small pine table, facing east toward the Sangre de Cristo foothills. My view has a horse tank that needs filling, a white fence with a small robins-egg-blue gate, a birdbath in terra-cotta with some of its figurines knocked off, a bright yellow garden hose I will use to fill the horse tank and the birdbath, an overgrown garden plot, a bucket lying on its side, my small dog, Maxwell, soaking in the early spring sunlight like an optimistic sunbather on a chilly beach day. When it warms up and that yellow hose has thawed out, I will fill the horse tank. When I warm up, I will tell you what I know about letting yourself write.

The first trick, the one I am practicing now, is to just start where you are. Its a luxury to be in the mood to write. Its a blessing but its not a necessity. Writing is like breathing, its possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

Writing is like breathing. I believe that. I believe we all come into life as writers. We are born with a gift for language and it comes to us within months as we begin to name our world. We all have a sense of ownership, a sense of satisfaction as we name the objects that we find. Words give us power.

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