"Write for Life" by Julia Cameron: My First Impressions

After noticing that "The Artist's Way" had blown up on TikTok, and talking about the famed title with a friend, I was desperate to try it for myself. I didn't know who Julia Cameron was, but the buzz surrounding her best-selling book enamoured me. My head was swirling with thoughts of a spring filled with long days spent pouring my whole heart into my creativity. In my mind, I could see myself losing track of time watching flowers bloom. Then spending evenings writing poems long into sunset by the delicate breeze of an open window. Warmth in the air, what a Pinterest scene.

After the dense darkness of a winter filled with grief, I felt the need to throw myself into something bigger than myself. I needed to create and let it all pour out. I thought of "The Artist's Way" as a kind of initiation that I could go through. A complete surrendering where I offered myself wholly, in devotion to a life of creativity.

Opening my phone and typing the title into Amazon, I soon found Julia was far from a one-hit wonder. She had coined an expansive range of works throughout her career, all brimming with tips and advice on almost every aspect of the creative process. One that caught my eye in particular, was "Write for Life". The title beckoned to my soul like a guiding light across a dock. A niche programme explicitly aimed at writers. Previously a lifelong dabbler in penmanship, I knew I had found the initiation I was searching for. Six weeks of transformation leading the way into the spring were ahead of me, and I couldn't wait to start.

Who is Julia Cameron?

Julia Cameron is a best-selling author of over 40 books. She is also a poet, playwright, screenwriter, and songwriter. There is hardly anything related to the written word that she hasn't tried her hand at, preferring to keep herself out of any rigid boxes. She is a lover of text who has put pen to paper seemingly every day of her adult life either for work or for pleasure.

In the early paragraphs of "Write for Life," Julia intimately details how she pens long letters inside handwritten cards to friends and family, with words of comfort, and connection enclosed. She chooses to write for her love of the craft, even when she isn't working on her latest professional piece or scrawling her beloved Morning Pages. Julia is a writer, in every single sense of the word.

Alongside a flourishing and well-established career that she's built for herself, she teaches others, pouring from the well of her vast experience. Much to her credit, she pays homage to her lifelong love affair with words by offering herself and her knowledge in deep service to other's. Providing a beacon of light to writers and creatives everywhere. Julia ignites the torch of other writers across the globe from the fires of her own passion, through a multitude of individual works offering tools and tips for all areas of creativity. They all share one aim, to help other creatives find and nurture their own inner spark.

Click here to read more about Julia on her website

What is the main structure of the programme?

The overarching message that flows through the book is simply this: to inspire people from all over the world to embrace their creative gifts and give them the practical tools they'll need to use them. In her own words, Julia states:

"It is the act of writing that makes us writers. If you have a desire to write, that desire is worth listening to - and acting upon."

It is a simple yet poignant message, but as writers, we know all too well that sometimes it isn't as easy as it sounds. We fight a daily battle in the trenches of perfectionism, self-doubt, and procrastination that can stop the best of writers from writing altogether. The world is littered with stories that will forever stay half-finished, and poetry books in dusty boxes that another's eyes will never see. So once we discover we have the conviction to write, how do we ensure we actually write?

"Write for Life" outlines in week number one 5 simple tools for creativity that Julia has tried and tested both personally and on her students. These practices and daily rituals are the foundations she lives by and credits her massive success as a writer to. She shares them lovingly, so that we may implement them into our lives as well, and reap the many benefits she has witnessed. Each practice has its own significance and function. I'll briefly outline each one below before I continue. This will give you, as a reader, a basic knowledge of what I'm talking about when I use the terms throughout this article and in the updates that follow in subsequent weeks of the programme. To go deeper into the practices I highly recommend buying the book and diving into the programme for yourself.

1. The Morning Pages: A daily practice of sitting down in the morning and writing three A4-sized pages of longhand prose, from only the writer's immediate stream of consciousness. There is no right or wrong thing to write. It sounds like a lot, but when you start, it becomes a transformative and magical practice you genuinely look forward to.
2. Artist Dates: A weekly date with just you and your inner artist, said to energise, inspire and help creativity flow into all areas of your life. No phones!
3. Walks: Two walks a week minimum, for twenty minutes. Said to help clarify the thoughts and give the writer answers to the questions they seek.
4. Quotas: A small, achievable daily writing quota. To develop discipline in one's practice and enhance the writer's confidence.
5. Writing Stations: A base for creativity. A couple of places in your home or neighbourhood that switch your creative brain on when you arrive at them.

The practices outlined in the book form a foundational structure for the natural creative process to flow from. As a writer, we can't control too much of our practice. We can't guarantee a best-selling novel will flow from our pen in one sitting, but we can create the optimal conditions for creativity and allow things to flow from there. It is a craft, an art form, routed in letting go and flowing with the universal energy around us. We must let it flow through us as we breathe and observe. It's no surprise that a woman with a career as prominent as Julia's knows exactly what the correct conditions for creation, are and has them down to fine art. What a beauty it is that she has chosen to pour her passion into sharing with us all she has learned.

My first try of the Morning Pages...

It was actually tea time for me. Not exactly the morning I know but I hadn't picked up my new book from its Amazon locker until just two hours before the school run. I was so eager to get started that I quickly buried my head in the pages when I got home. Within the hour, I'd completely finished the paragraphs from week one. I was feeling both inspired and in awe. As though I'd just struck gold - which, if this book leads me on to a successful career as a writer, I just might have done.

It was a Monday, and I liked the idea of starting week one at the start of a calendar week and keeping the next six weeks rolling like that. However, because I'd only just got the book I hadn't been able to do my morning pages and I didn't want to have a day missed out. I wanted to thoroughly commit to every task Julia set so that when I was sitting down on Sunday to write my review of week one I knew I had honestly and completely immersed myself in the entirety of this process. A little case study of myself, in a way.

So my first crack at Morning Pages ended up taking place at tea time instead, just to give it a go and get a feel for things ready for the days ahead. I cosied up on the couch with a brand new refill pad I grabbed from Home Bargains on the walk home from the kid's school, connected my headphones to some relaxing background music in my phone and shut the world out. The incredible father of my children whizzed around the room, the most wonderful supporter of my creative endeavours, clearing tables, wiping messy faces, and filling hungry tummies with requested snacks. Whilst I furiously burrowed by pen into the fresh white page, filling line after line with whatever entered my head. Mostly words of adoration for Julia and her work, with expressions of excitement for the weeks ahead.

I hadn't written prose for this long by hand since school essays over ten years ago. It gave way to the kind of creative flow and streamlined thought process I had been wishing for while staring at a blinking cursor on my laptop. I silently cursed myself a little, not dissimilar to how someone curses themselves when they tip the whole house upside down searching for something only for it to be in the first place they looked. Of course, in the past, I had found moments of flow at my laptop, many times. This was just so much more effortless and came with so much less anxiety and fear. Unlike all the times I'd blinked blankly into the light of an open laptop convincing myself I'd never write anything worth reading ever again. Pen in hand the sentences came in abundance, a fair exchange for a sore hand.

What am I most apprehensive about?

I have never really managed to be consistent with many things, and if there's anything the book has driven home it's that a career as a writer requires a consistent daily practice. Three A4-sized pages of writing at the very beginning of every single day won't be easy for me, but I'm determined to make the effort to stick with it because the benefits seem so astounding.

There is a clear air of nervousness in the pit of my stomach when I think about it. A niggling worry that I'll do it for a few weeks and then drop it like I have done with so many other things, but something about this programme feels different. Despite these worries, I'm gently hopeful that the morning pages will stick and become a lifelong foundation that a real career as a writer can bloom from. Maybe they'll even help me to find more consistency in other areas of life too.

The second thing I'm a little apprehensive about is finding the time for weekly artist dates. I love the idea of them. I'm picturing a luxurious uninterrupted cup of artisan coffee, warm in my palms, at a quirky table in a lost part of town completely alone. That sounds like utter bliss. Carving out the time though, could be a difficult feat. With tw0 kids and two dogs in the house some weeks I'm hard-pressed to get a bath alone, nevermind find the time to romance and seduce my inner artist into producing some diamonds.

However, I do know how powerful and beneficial this practice will be if I can manage to make the time for it. All too often we meander around like zombies, somehow managing to pour from the proverbial "empty cup". This is hardly a satisfying way for anyone to live and does not deliver the moments of pleasure required to produce a creative flow. Committing a couple of hours a week to date my inner artist will no doubt provide more energy in all areas of my life in the long run. Time well spent in exchange for an overall boost in vitality.

When we sleepwalk through our lives we're cut off completely from the flow of creation that exists all around us. As creative energy is life force energy, to allow it to flow through us we have to immerse ourselves in it. We have to get swept away in it, we have to really live. Then the current of life will flow through us, and out again.

I already can't wait to get started on week 2. If you enjoyed reading my thoughts and first impressions of "Write to Life" subscribe and follow along over the next six weeks whilst I dive into the programme. I'll be posting weekly reviews as I make my way through it talking all about how I'm finding it and what benefits I'm seeing from taking part. I can already feel it making a massive difference to my inspiration and creativity, I can't wait to see what happens next.

If you want to jump in and try the programme with me, you can easily buy the book and all of Julia Cameron's other titles from Amazon using the link below. If you do use my link I will generate a small commission as a result.