I added a motivational quote from writer/author/artist/teacher, Julia Cameron, in the hope that I might find the motivation needed to jump-start my writing. It has caused me to revisit two of her books on the creative process, The Artist Way and The Vein of Gold. Both books have a spiritual premise, a belief that the act of creating is spiritual, with specific exercises designed to unlock the creative mind and go beyond self-made limitations. Julia believes that creativity is our true nature and that blocks to that nature are unnatural. In essence, Julia offers techniques that spawn a more creative way of living in general, which in turn, nurtures the creative process in particular and blocks to our natural creative selves dissolve naturally.

Revisiting Julia’s books has caused me to re-examine my extreme resistance to any kind of writing. Once upon a time I would get up very early in the morning so that I could write before my normal workday began. I followed Julia’s exercise “The Morning Pages”, where you write three, seaming meaningless, pages every morning. A quote from The Artist Way on the morning pages: “In order to retrieve your creativity, you need to find it.” The idea is to dump all the negative, judgmental, and/or worrisome thoughts running wildly through our minds onto a blank page. I call this mindset my eternal editor, the one that says I can’t write, that I must be insane to think I might have something important to say and that no one would ever want to read what I write. But it goes further than just my writing, my editor is my judge and jury and nothing I do is quite good enough. Julia refers to it as the Censor, someone else might call it something else but the idea is to give it expression so that we can get to the other side, the creative, free-flowing side, the side that knows no limitations and doesn’t judge in terms of good and bad, it just is what it is, creative.

I did my morning pages for years, so many I can’t remember not doing them but one day I just stopped. Why, I’m unsure but it happened shortly after my father’s death and my new adventure into the cyber realm. I didn’t stop writing right away but slowly the writing stopped and soon I found my resistance to be greater than my dream of being a writer. It felt like I had nothing to say, no story to tell, no creativity to express. I have done some writing in the past few years but nothing that excited me. It felt more like a chore than a desire, it even became painful and it showed in my writing. Did I stop writing because I stopped doing my morning pages, or was it my father’s death that spawned my sense of lack, or was it my cyber adventure that turned me away from my dream? I think all of the above played a role in turning me away from writing. However, I remember what doing those morning pages did for me, not just for my writing, but also for the way I viewed my world and the role I played in it. I felt more connected, more spiritual and certainly more creative in general.

I’m recommitting to doing those morning pages. I may even redo the whole process laid out in Julia’s book, The Vein of Gold, and report my progress here, on this blog. It might help me stay committed and help someone else who is struggling with writers block or with his or her lack of creative inspiration. I should mention that doing the morning pages isn’t just for writers, it’s for anyone that feels blocked creatively. Before I get involved in the process outlined in The Vein of Gold, I want to write about my past experience with doing the morning pages, how I did them and what I learned about myself in the process.

Julia has another book out that I have not read, The Right to Write. If the title is any indication of what the book offers, I need to read it! If anyone happens to come across this blog and has read this book, please leave a comment and let me know what you thought of it.

Here is a brief bio and an interview with Julia by Anne Bowling for the WritesMarket.com.

Here is a link to Earl Storm’s message on how The Artist Way workshop changed his life. Earl’s Story