Tag: Julia Cameron

Messy Pages and Plot Twists: Journaling, Cinema and the Creative Spark

A couple of years ago, I revisited the Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way. I have kept journals on and off for the past 30 years and certainly consistently over the past 8-10 years. As Julia suggests, I write 3 pages each day, but I rarely get to do this in the morning. My pages are completed as part of my evening routine.

There is nothing earth shattering within the hundreds of pages I have written. They are mainly trivial recollections of the day with the occasional piece of insight. No historian will ever want to read it. I miss most of the important things that have happened on the world stage. Instead, I concentrate on the minutia of my life. Still, I keep writing and find it a comforting daily exercise.

While I write my blogs on the computer, my journals are all handwritten. I use a fountain pen because I love the feel of the nib as it glides across the paper. My writing is both messy and ‘ample’ as someone once said. I prefer a medium nib that lets the ink flow like my words tumbling out onto the paper. Sometimes I get the first part of a word on paper and part of the next. My hand can’t keep up with my thoughts. But that’s OK too. Nobody will read this, not even me. I have boxes of journals under the stairs which would make good kindling for my funeral pyre.

But writing the three or so pages daily is only part of Julia Cameron’s routine. Another practice she advocates is the artist date. She points out that this is one of the hardest to keep. We create all sorts of reasons why we can’t make time for ourselves. I had forgotten about this until last week. I realized that I had not been out anywhere for weeks, except the shops and my customary dog walk. Something had to change.

On a hot day there’s nothing better than escaping to the airconditioned comfort of a cinema. My favourite place is the Palace Electric in Acton which also hosts various film festivals. There were several films to choose from. I decided on ‘Conclave’ which was a drama centred on the election of a new pope. I was surprised as to how many people were in the audience. I presumed it would only be Catholics or those who had an affiliation with Catholicism who would find the film interesting. It seems it had a much broader appeal. The intrigues and machinations reminded me of ‘The Name of the Rose’, at a smaller scale. The acting was superb, but the characters mainly depicted nationalistic stereotypes. Nevertheless, the film took me on a pleasant cinematic ride. It had one of the best plot twists I never saw coming at the end.

After the movie, I thought about why Julia Cameron advocates the Artist’s date. Yes, there’s the usual ‘you need to fill your cup’ first type answer, but I sensed that there was more. I thought about the experience of walking into the foyer, smelling the popcorn, watching people mingling at the bar, wondering whether I should get a glass of wine (I didn’t), then walking into the dark cavern of the cinema itself. I had to find the row, the seat number, wonder whether people were going to sit next to me. Then when more people arrived, I had to practise equanimity as the talked and talked right through the ads. I hoped they’d stop once the film started, and they did. Then the feeling of watching a film on a big screen, the clarity and immediacy of it. Finally, leaving the theatre and listening to snippets of people’s conversations about the film. The experience brought me into the world and out of my head where I had been stuck for days. A writer has to experience things and Julia Cameron invites us to do just that. Or as Hemingway put it ever so eloquently – ‘In order to write about life first you must live it.’

Morning pages

There are weeks when writing is hard. I just had one of them. Illness, deadlines, and distractions all got in the way, and I didn’t write. Although, strictly speaking this isn’t true. I always write something, it just might not be a blog post. In this past week I have written a job application (not my favourite kind of writing) and I have written in my journal. It is the one thing I manage to do almost every day of the year.

I try to follow Julia Cameron’s rule of three handwritten pages first thing in the morning. When time is tight, I will write one page rather than not write at all. As my friend Kellie likes to remind me, ‘done is better than perfect.’ When I write longhand, words flow from my pen as if my right hand was connected to my thoughts. Sometimes when I read a sentence back, I notice that I have written the first part of a word and finished it with the next one. It is fast, unedited, stream of consciousness writing.

Most of the time, my scribbles are not worth reading. They chronicle mundanities of life, sometimes strange dreams and on rare occasions, I might get some insight. Still, I persist. As Julia Cameron suggests, morning pages are for my eyes only and they are not meant to be creative writing but a way to clear the mind.

Weeks go by when I think that the morning pages have done nothing at all for me. Then I realise that getting those initial thoughts out of my system allow me to face the day without ‘stuff’ circling in my mind. I can leave all those thoughts in the journal. It is like having a container for loose change, only that in this case the container holds loose thoughts.

Every now and again, a solution to a problem presents itself in the pages. Granted, it doesn’t happen often. These are like little nuggets of gold that are left behind when all the dirt has been washed away. I can’t expect to find a nugget every day but when I do, I know that the process has worked its charm.

It takes me about fifteen minutes in the morning to write three pages. I don’t use prompts. I simply pick up the pen, put it to paper and let it glide across the page. I enter an almost a meditative state where I watch the pen do its work. I sit with a cup of tea, write, sip, write some more and finally close the journal. I rarely read what I have written, although it can be useful to go back after a few months and get a sense of how things have shifted.

I recommend the habit of morning pages. They allow you to clear away the cobwebs and start the day unburdened. You might find it the most worthwhile fifteen minutes of your day.

The Artist’s date

Last month I watched a live interview with Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. I had read the book five years ago and began writing morning pages. I thought that was a good enough start and resisted putting her other tools to use. It worked for a while and then I lost my way.

After struggling for years with writing a memoir, I came across the London Writers’ Salon. Joining that supportive group of writers has enabled me to commit to daily writing and within a few short months, I have been able to finish the manuscript. I am now in the throes of editing, editing and editing. Who knows how many more edits will be required to make this little gem shine.

Listening to Julia Cameron I realised I needed to revisit the Artist’s Way and recommit to some of her principles. My morning pages were going well but as for the rest of it, I could see I was avoiding key pieces of her advice. Like the artist’s date for example.

Commit yourself to a weekly artist’s date, and then watch your killjoy side try to wriggle out of it.

She was right of course. The idea of an artist’s date is to allow yourself at least two hours a week to have a playdate with yourself, to do something that brings joy and is self-nurturing. It has to be a solitary activity, but dogs are permitted.

The first week I took Zoë to the Botanic Gardens in Orange. I found solace in walking in the rain and enjoyed finding various paths that led to different areas for me to explore. I then wanted to complete the date with lunch at their café, but I was 15 minutes late. Disappointed, I had a piece of cake I didn’t really want. Annoyed at myself, I drank my tea, ate the cake, and left. I wasn’t so sure that this had been a successful date but was willing to have another go the following week.

The next Saturday I began to wriggle and squirm. Still, I was determined to do it. I found that my local cinema was showing Ticket to Paradise with Julia Roberts and George Clooney. Why not? So, I went to see it. Surprisingly, I felt quite comfortable on my own in the cinema but was less than impressed with the movie. The plot was so predicable that I worked out the ending within the first five minutes. Ho hum.

Yesterday, I decided to go for a drive up Mt Canobolas with Zoē. We drove the potholed roads past stunning wineries and beautiful homes. Then I turned left onto the windy road up to the summit only to find that it was closed for redevelopment. I did a three-point turn and headed towards Mt Canobalas Lake instead.

I noted that the café was open, but decided to walk around the lake first. Zoë had to stay on her lead which she didn’t mind as she had plenty of interesting smells to explore. I quite liked being out on the track on my own. There were interesting cloud formations and new growth on trees which I photographed. Yet I was restless within me, even though this was exactly the kind of activity that always soothed my soul. I think I was about three quarters of the way around the lake before I stilled my mind and relaxed into the activity. Time for a cup of tea, I thought. But once again, I missed the opening hours by 15 minutes. Is this an omen?

I have no idea what I will do next week. I’m running out of ideas. There are a couple of art galleries I could visit or maybe there is a free course I can attend. A week to go and I can feel the struggle already.

You are likely to find yourself avoiding your artist dates. Recognise this resistance as a fear of intimacy – self intimacy.

Ok Julia I hear you, but let me tell you, the struggle is real.