How to Write for Life

In this abridged extract from Write for Life – an essential toolkit for all writers – we're sharing some of our favourite writing tips from the 'Queen of Creativity' Julia Cameron.

MORNING PAGES

As a writer, I credit my daily practice of Morning Pages with giving me the willingness to start where I am. What precisely are Morning Pages? They are three daily pages of longhand morning writing that is strictly stream of consciousness.

The pages clear my head and prioritize my day. I think of them as a potent form of meditation. There is no wrong way to do the pages. You simply keep your hand moving across the page, writing down anything and everything that occurs to you. It is as though you are sending the universe a telegram: “This is what I like, this is what I don’t like”—implicit in this, “Please help me.” If the pages are meditation, they are also a potent form of prayer.

LAYING TRACK

What does it mean to “lay track”? It means to go from point A to point B without concern that we are taking the very best route. Laying track comes from the days when railroads were laid coast to coast, requiring a certain number of miles laid daily. Every day, a certain amount of track—a certain distance—needed to be covered. And so, the workers put down ties and rails until they reached their daily quota.

As writers, we can take a cue from this. We want to get from A to B to C, and so on through the alphabet, by small increments—our own daily quota. In laying track, we are laying down a rough draft. It can be fixed later. Rough drafts should be exactly that: rough. Our perfectionist loathes this fact, but never mind. Later, when we retrace the distance laid, we can correct errors.

The work has a shape, which it will tell us if we are open to it. Listening for the direction that the work intends to take gives us great originality. We lay down the track as it is “told” to us. By not second-guessing our ideas, we find ourselves writing freely and with authenticity.

PATIENCE

I have learned through my long years of writing that patience is a necessary virtue for a writer. I have learned that going slow serves me better than going fast. As a young writer I rushed ahead, overfishing my inner well. My writing suffered. It was fast, but it was also thin and strained. Rewrites, often extensive rewrites, were necessary. My hurry didn’t serve me.

A word at a time, a thought at a time, writing is the distillate of our experience. The nectar of our psyche, writing deserves not to be rushed. Writing Morning Pages daily, we learn to transcribe each thought as it comes to us. Writing on our projects, we find ourselves moving ahead a thought at a time. We are learning patience, waiting for each idea to arise. Our writing becomes quite literally thought-full. Our prose becomes richer. Patience is the key to fine writing. I love to write, and patience has taught me to savour the process.

FEAR

Pen in hand, you are ready to write. That is, you are almost ready to write. You have a moment or two of procrastination to get through. You see, you are afraid. Let us say your first sentence comes to you. With it, comes the thought, “Is that good enough?” You judge your sentence harshly, as you are afraid of its being judged. Perfectionism is at hand. You want your sentence to be perfect, by which you mean brilliant. You want to write freely, but fear marches alongside your train of thought. Your second sentence brings to mind, “Is it good enough?” You screw your courage to the sticking post. You begin. And as you do, the miraculous happens. Your fear subsides. You are committed now to what you are writing. Judgment be damned. Your thoughts are flowing—that is, they are if you have accepted sentence number one.

This is where discipline enters the picture. Discipline tells you you must accept your first sentence. You must believe in the validity of your first thought. It is indeed good enough. In point of fact, it may be very good indeed. Our first thoughts are often precisely the right thought with which to begin. They are often bold. They are often assertive. They hold open a gate for further thoughts to follow. They do all this if we embrace them, if we set aside our fear of being judged.
 

ORIGINALITY

“But Julia, my story has been told before,” the ego yelps. Yes, it has, and that is what gives it its power. As we admit on the page our faults and foibles, we allow the reader to identify, to enter the story we are telling. When a work lacks resonance, it is because it lacks vulnerability. It takes humility, not ego, to be a great writer. “But Julia, surely it takes ego to tell a tale.” Far more than ego, it takes courage, the necessary courage to say the familiar, knowing that it has been said before, and that it will be said again, and that the saying, the authentic tracing of our tale, is what makes us original. And yes, we all have tales to tell.

Many of us believe that our lives are boring, that they do not hold material for our work. But our lives are not boring, and they do hold material for our work. At its root, the fear of being “boring” is a fear of not being original. We forget that “original” has as its root the word “origin,” and we are the origin of our work, which is, by definition, original, not boring.

Julia Cameron is credited with starting a movement in 1992 that has brought creativity into the mainstream conversation - in the arts, in business, and in everyday life. She is the bestselling author of more than forty books; a poet, songwriter, filmmaker and playwright. Her most famous book, The Artist's Way, has been translated into forty languages and sold over five million copies to date.