Contents
Also by Julia Cameron
NONFICTION
The Artists Way (with Mark Bryan)
The Artists Way Morning Pages Journal
The Artists Date Book
(illustrated by Elizabeth Cameron)
The Vein of Gold
The Right to Write
God Is No Laughing Matter
Supplies (illustrated by Elizabeth Cameron)
God Is Dog Spelled Backwards
(illustrated by Elizabeth Cameron)
Heartsteps
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)
Normal, Nebraska (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 FILMS
Gods Will (writer/director)
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INVOCATION
Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with peoples dreamstheir visions, reallywe are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We invoke the Great Creator when we invoke our own creativity, and that creative force has the power to alter lives, fulfill destinies, and answer our dreams.
All of us are creative. Just as blood is a fact of your physical body and nothing you invented, creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent.
Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of lifeincluding ourselves. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the Creators creativity within us and our lives.
We are, ourselves, creations. We, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. Creativity is Gods gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction. As we open our creative channel to the Creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
In order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it. You do this by an apparently pointless process I call the Morning Pages. The Morning Pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. What are Morning Pages? Put simply, the Morning Pages are three pages of longhand morning writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness.
There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art. Although occasionally colorful, the Morning Pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or blandeven silly sounding. Good! All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and your creativity.
Over any considerable period of time, the Morning Pages perform spiritual chiropractic. They realign our values. If we are to the left or the right of our personal truth, the pages will point out the need for a course adjustment. We will become aware of our drift and correct itif only to hush the pages up. Just as an athlete accustomed to running becomes irritable when he is unable to get his miles in, so, too, those of us now accustomed to Morning Pages will notice an irritability when we let them slide. We are tempted, always, to reverse cause and effect: I was too crabby to write them, instead of I didnt write them so I am crabby.
As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on themto restock the trout pond, so to speak. I call this process filling the well. In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Do not do what you should dospiritual sit-ups like reading a dull but recommended critical text. Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery.
You need artist dates. Your artist needs to be taken out, pampered, and listened to. But what exactly is an artist date? An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a solo play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers.
Art is an image-using system. In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked trout pond. Any extended period or piece of work draws heavily on our artistic well. Over-tapping the well, like overfishing the pond, leaves us with diminished resources. We fish in vain for the images we require. Our work dries up and we wonder why, just when it was going so well. The truth is that work can dry up because it is going so well. This is why we must remember to fill the well. Serious work demands serious play. This is why it is called the play of ideas.
Trusting our creativity is new behavior for many of us. It may feel quite threatening initially, not only to us but also to our intimates. We may feeland lookerratic. This erraticism is a normal part of getting unstuck, pulling free from the muck that has blocked us. It is important to remember that at first flush, going sane feels just like going crazy. Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself. A creative recovery is a healing process.
The process of identifying a self inevitably involves loss as well as gain. We discover our boundaries, and those boundaries by definition separate us from our fellows. As we clarify our perceptions, we lose our misconceptions. As we eliminate ambiguity, we lose illusion as well. We arrive at clarity, and clarity creates change. Some of our friends may feel threatened. If they do, they may try to sabotage our healthy changes.
Many blocked people are actually very powerful and creative personalities who have been made to feel guilty about their own strengths and gifts. Without being acknowledged, they are often used as batteries by their families and friends, who feel free to both use their creative energies and disparage them. Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other peoples plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesnt. It makes us frustrated people.
