Julia Cameron: Awakening the Inner Creative
“Are you doing something that brings you joy? Are you doing something that brings you fulfillment? Do you take yourself seriously when you have a dream or do you say, “Oh you are being too big for your britches?” What happens with morning pages is we are led into expansion —we are trained by the pages to take risks. The first risk is putting it on the page, the second risk is saying to yourself, “Oh I couldn’t try that.” The pages keep nudging you, and finally you say, “Oh alright I’ll try,” and the “oh alright I’ll try” is what brings you to an expanded sense of self because the risk you are afraid to take soon becomes the risk you have taken…” so says Julia Cameron, best-selling author of more than forty books, poet, songwriter, filmmaker and playwright. Hailed by many as “The Godmother” of creativity, Julia is credited with starting a movement in 1992 that has brought creativity into the mainstream. Her book, The Artist’s Way, has been translated into forty languages and sold over five million copies to date, inspiring millions of readers with it’s egalitarian view of creativity: We’ve all got it, and Julia is on a mission to help us unlock it. The book bestows the reader with a practical toolkit, including the famous Morning Pages and Artist Dates, in service of the broader creative journey and personal rejuvenation. Her newest book, Seeking Wisdom, explores connecting to the artistic process through prayer.
In this episode of Pulling the Thread, Julia and I talk creativity, process, and purpose. We are so worried about being selfish, Julia says, that we end up investing disproportionately in the lives and dreams of others—sacrificing our own passions in the process. Her approach guides readers, one step at a time, out of a stymied life and into a more expansive, more joyful existence, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. I hope our conversation resonates with the creator in all of you.
MORE FROM JULIA CAMERON:
The Artist’s Way
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE:
I loved Seeking Wisdom, which then put me back into The Artist’s Way. So I've been doing my Morning Pages and I just, I hadn't read that book in so long. And I went back into it and re-read The Artist’s Way. as well. I know you've written so many books, but I love that you don't feel compelled. I think there's so much cultural pressure for people to be always creating new or making things like always coming up with some new system or , some new protocol that somehow changes or evolves. And I love that you just like The Artist’s Way. feels like it's the center. And then you just find different paths to come back to the, to, to bring people to, to this, the core of your work, which I love. Cause I think it's very reassuring that you're not telling people to do something entirely different: Morning Pages, Artist dates, and that this idea of Seeking Wisdom or ways to pray is one more road to finding that sort of spiritual home, which I know is the, the nut of it. So do you still do your Morning Pages?
JULIA:
I do I do. This day’s Morning Pages said that I would be able to talk to you freely.
ELISE:
Oh yes. So for those who are uninitiated into this, the artist's way, can you take us through how the morning pages came to crystallize as this central tool and sort of what they do for people?
JULIA:
First of all, we need to say what they are, which are three pages of long-hand morning writing that you do. First thing on awakening and, um, Morning Pages are not journaling where you set a topic and say, I'm gonna write everything. I think about Fred. Morning Pages instead, skip topic to topic, a topic it's as if you have taken a little whisk broom and you've poked it into all the corners of your life. And you've brought the debris into the center of the room where you can cope with it. And Morning Pages say things like: I forgot to buy kitty litter. The car has a funny knock in it. I didn't tell Fred to back off when he stole my idea yesterday. So they go from the petty to the profound, and they're done first things first. And Morning Pages have become a sort of universally known tool. And I believe that's because what they do, uh, is put us in touch with a sense of guidance.
ELISE:
And to get to that sense of guidance, you have to declutter your mind in a way, or put aside all of those, the provocations that keep us ruminating, obsessing, or stymied, or unable to sort of turn our attention to what it is that we really wanna do. Is that the general idea?
JULIA:
It's it exactly.
ELISE:
Great. It's funny. You mentioned in one of your examples, like Fred stole my idea, but one of the, the central thesis of your life's work is that everyone in some ways is essentially a creative. That the creator, or God, or Elmo or LaoTzu, or Buddha, or universe, or nature, Gaia, whatever you wanna call it, this animating energy or force is available to each of us equally. And that sort of God, as you refer to that power is the, is creator is ultimately creative in that each of us are in some ways being tasked to bring that energy through our own unique design. Is that fair or accurate? Everyone's creative?
JULIA:
Everyone is creative. Uh, and what happens with Morning Pages is that we come in touch with the flow of ideas. We are writing out all of the rubble and distraction, and we're left with clearheaded guidance, and the guidance. I sometimes think it sounds a little bit woo woo to people. But my experience is we are given a next right step. And morning pages lead you, a step at a time, out of a stymied life into a more expansive and joyful life. And I sometimes call them a radical codependency withdrawal, because what we're doing, is bringing our energy back into our own core, where we can use it along lines that seem fruitful to us. I think when people enter The Artist's Way, many times they are so worried about being selfish, that they bend over backwards to help other people. And it happens that they spend all their energy on other people's agendas instead of doing what gives them delight.
ELISE:
There's a part actually in, in Artist's Way, not seeking wind, sorry, not Seeking Wisdom, but where you write, I hope you don't mind. If I read to you: “Many of us find that we have squandered our own creative energies by investing disproportionately in the lives, hopes, dreams, and plans of others. Their lives have obscured and detoured our own. As we consolidate our core through our withdrawal process, we become more able to articulate our own boundaries, dreams, and authentic goals. Our personal flexibility increases while our malleability to the whims of others decreases. We experience a heightened sense of autonomy and possibility.” Yeah, just one of many, many sections that I underlined that felt resonant, and very true for me, it's much safer, I think. And you, you write about this as people who are creative and are not fully creatively expressed, typically align themselves or maybe like gallerist or they're book editors, but not writers, or they are doing something that's ancillary to what they really want for themselves, but that we're scared, or inhibited, or distracted, or from actually pursuing what we want, by funneling our creative energy, into helping other people express themselves. Which of course feels, it's a, it's great. I love my book editor and my brother's a book editor and he loves his job, but it's not the same. Right. For, for people who then feel stymied or not expressed. And you could do both, right. I'm assuming there are many great writers who are also book editors.
JULIA:
Yes, we don't wanna say, do this one thing and bar everything else. But what we do wanna say is: “Are you doing something that brings you joy? Are you doing something that brings you fulfillment? Do you take yourself seriously when you have a dream or do you say, oh, you're being too big for your, for your britches?” So I think that what happens with Morning Pages is that we are led into expansion. We're trained by the pages to take risks. The first risk is putting it on the page, the second risk to yourself: “Oh, I couldn't try that.” The pages keep nudging you. And finally you say, “"Oh, alright, I'll try.” And the, oh, alright, I'll try is what brings you to an expanded sense of self, because the risk that you are afraid to take soon becomes the risk that you've taken. I think that the pages coax you to take baby steps, and the baby steps soon becomes strides.
ELISE:
And one of the things that I think it's in Seeking Wisdom, but you and I, I love this idea, which I think is, and you, you mentioned it in The Artist's Way in a different way, but this idea of like, I think you asked the question, like, do you think God is big enough for you? And I think so many of us, and again, I know God as a word is triggering for people and I'm not a religious person, but I am deeply spiritual. I think in a similar way to you where I feel very connected to some universal force that does open doors. Like the minute I put myself in motion, it's like things start happening or aligning. But I think we have this idea that, and I'd love to get into this with you, that our creative hopes and dreams are outside of the scope of what some spiritual universe would want, or they're too grand or they're too ancillary in a way. It's like, we, we kind of can't have it anyway. Right? Like we're beneath God, we're above God. How do you think about that? Because I know part of this of Seeking Wisdom is this idea of prayer is a way to reconnect and actually start to experience the profundity and vastness of the created world, sort of opening your eyes to everything that's, that's already happening that's miraculous around us.
JULIA:
So I think that what you're talking about is a spiritual awakening. Call it that. And I think it's important to say, don't let semantics be a bar to you. If you are comfortable saying, God, say God, but you might say higher power, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Glenda the Good Witch as your mentor. And what we're trying to do is open ourselves up to the idea that the creator is profound. But also I think the impulse for me, behind writing, Seeking Wisdom was to take the creation that you become connected to in The Artist's Way and expand it further into a world where we begin to have a little bit of, we begin to trust that there is a higher power that has our best interests at heart.
ELISE:
And that's interested, right? It's funny. I think in The Artist's Way you talk about how so many of us are not that comfortable feeling watched very closely. Like that's an intimidating idea, a terrifying idea. But yet at the same time, I think any of like, all we really want in some ways is to be seen. To be seen. Valued, not even maybe valued, but just seen. Recognized. So this idea that there's some higher power that actually not only sees us, but is like, I'm gonna help you. This is a co-creative process, which is how I've also always felt, which then gets into this strangeness around authorship in a way. And it's funny, I was looking at GoodReads and there was a guy who was commenting either on this book or Artist's Way. And he's like, I don't, you know, he was pissed, and he was saying, well, if the whole point is like, you're creating something with God, like I'm not interested in that. Like essentially it was like the egoism of this is my creation. Why, why would I wanna create something that's not mine, that makes no sense, which I thought was really fun actually. But how do you know you're in that co-creative energy flow? Is it a feeling in your body? I mean, as someone who's created so much, how do you know that you're in it, in the river?
JULIA:
Well I think this is where faith comes in. Yeah. I think we write Morning Pages and they train us to do what I, I call dropping down the well, and because there's no wrong way to write Morning Pages and you can be as petty, uh, as petulant, as tiresome, as exhausted, as irritated as you are. And that's still welcome there. We begin learn to set aside our critic, because the critic will say, “Oh, you're boring.” But we learn to say by writing Morning Pages, “Thank you for sharing,” and writing. I think that we, over time, we train our critic to stand to one side. And when we have the critic to one side, we have an experience of what I would call flow. I just wrote a preface to a 30th anniversary edition of The Artist's Way. And I think that the reason it has worked for 30 years is what you were saying before, that the tools are sort of tried and true.
And I recently got reviewed by someone who said, Julia’s tools are simple and repetitive. I think this was supposed to be an insult, but I was thrilled. I thought tools should be simple and repetitive. They should give you a sense of safety. They should give you a sense of familiarity. What you're doing when you write Morning Pages. And when you take Artist Dates, which are once a week solo expeditions to do something fun, you begin to connect to a universe that is benevolent and interesting. Uh, and as you walk out, you find yourself feeling connected.
ELISE:
It's funny too, with simple and repetitive, because I think that particularly with art and I put that in, in quotations, we've been so culturally primed to believe that it's and creating stuff is really hard. I don't want to diminish that. But that it should be impossible, arduous, painful, debilitating. Often we need to be impaired, depressed, like wounded in order to create great art, or that's one of the prevailing stereotypes culturally. When really like, I think people who are healed, who are writing from a scar rather than a seeping wound, can typically put stuff out into the world that can at least help more people. I think it's just another way, another way that we create hurdles, right? Barriers to allowing ourselves to be creative, or empowering ourselves to actually make things. Because we cling to this idea that it should be impossible, and it is true. You’re essentially like it's not that hard to start putting yourself in motion and seeing what comes out, and you might not be great at first word, but over time, these things start to come. Why do you think that we're so stymied and you talked about sort of the critic, silencing that inner critic, is it that as children, we were programmed to stuff those parts of ourselves down, or we live in a culture that doesn't prioritize creativity. What do you think happens? Where is that wound?
JULIA:
I think as children, we get told to hush, your father's busy. Don't bother me. I'm cooking dinner. Uh, and from these repeated hushings, we learn that any expression of self is going to be scolded. So I think a lot of times when we go to school, we may have a daring thought, but teacher may be frightened by our creativity, uh, and urge us back into convention. If it's alright with you. I wanna talk about the fact that we create out of joy as well as out of pain. And you perfectly described the notion we have of artists as suffering, tormented beings. But I'd like to read two brief poems that were created out of a sense of profound happiness. And this again was the impulse behind writing Seeking Wisdom. The idea that we could connect to a benevolent universe that could pay attention to us without hurting us, without scolding us, without judging us. That it was actually exuberant, gleeful, joyful, happy.
So this is called “Jerusalem is Walking in this World.” Uh, and it's the poem, that set me in motion on writing, Seeking Wisdom.
This is a great happiness. The air is silk. There is milk in the looks that come from strangers. I could not be happier if I were bred and you could eat me. Joy is dangerous. It fills me with secrets. Yes. Kisses in my veins. The pains I take to hide myself are sheer as glass. Surely this will pass. The wind like kisses. The music in the soup. The group of trees laughing as I say their names, it is all Hosanna. It is all prayer. Jerusalem is walking in this world. Jerusalem is walking in this world.
ELISE:
Beautiful and happy.
JULIA:
And happy. And prayerful. And colloquial. This is a poem that might have been written by the higher power to us. So I don't like to use the term channeled, but I do think sometimes messages are, if you will, funneled through us, this is called “Come to Me.”
Come to me. There is no darkness in which I cannot see you. Come to me. My green heart holds your ancestors. They're waiting to hear your dreams. Speak to them. They know your name. Do not imagine you are alone. Do not imagine they have left you. They are listening. Waiting for your voice. Come home. All of us are waiting. Every bird remembers you. The lion and his pride still knows your name. The gazelle, the snake, the silver hare, and lifting at the shore. All these and more your family. Come back to me. You do not need to grind your bones to dust. Rest in your heart. You are known to us. Only come home.
ELISE:
Beautiful. Why don't you like the word channeled?
JULIA:
Well, I think I have an aversion to, to seeming too woo, byy which I mean, not grounded enough. I think, this goes back to what you brought up about the man who said, I don't wanna create something with God and I wanna create something of my own. Yeah. I think wanting to create something of our own is a way to retain our identity as creators.
ELISE:
You also, you write about sort of like the agony of influence, which is that we're all pulling from the same collected consciousness, the same sort of Library of Congress. It's very hard to create anything that… it's impossible to create anything that feels entirely new, because nothing really is. We're all building on top of each other's work, and using other people as reference points, and sort of diving boards to go deeper. And the reality is, and I think you write about originality is sort of the origin of who we are each, each of us are. That there's no two of us who are the same, right? Not to get into like, oh, we're all special snowflakes, but we are right. Each person has beyond being designed completely differently. We each have our own life experience and we're each a prism for creativity that will, of course come through in a different way. So it's funny. It's like, it doesn't matter if it's co-creative it will still be original.
JULIA:
Yes. I think I loved your phrase. We were all special snowflakes. Because I believe that we are original in the sense that we are the origin of our work. Original has the word origin in it. And I think as we become more authentic writing Morning Pages and checking in with ourselves to see how we really feel. Going on Artist Dates, spending time alone with ourselves to sort of celebrate the, our inner soul. As we do these things, we become able, I don't like the word channeled. Uh, but I, I, I do tend to say that when we are “in the flow,” it's as if we are taking dictation and we're given the next word, the next thought. I believe there's a very strong connection between our hand, our heart, and our mind. And I urge people to write Morning Pages by hand because they will find themselves being led. And I think it's a little bit as if, if you are on the computer and you're whipping along, you can tend to miss things. And when you write by hand, you say, this is precisely where I am.
ELISE:
And to clarify writing pages for any act of creativity, it's not just for writers. This is in fact probably writers are the worst at Morning Pages I would imagine like. If you wanna be a potter, you wanna be a painter. you wanna be a musician, Morning Pages apply. It's the clearing of the gutters. And I love sort of the moments I love the, your comeback to people, which is like, do you know how old I'll be? By the time I do this? And then the answer is, well, do you know how old you'll be if you don't? So I have two questions: One the ways in which I think many of us get twisted, jealous when we identify other people who are doing what we wanna be doing in the world, or we see ideas that we had carried forward by other people and given sort of birth. So can you talk a little bit about that? And then can you also talk a bit about what happens to us when we don't creatively express, like how you see that show up in people's lives?
JULIA:
So those are quite a few questions.
ELISE:
I know I do this. I'm sorry. I just, I can't ask a simple question, Julia. I can’t do it.
JULIA:
You have a complicated mind. You have absorbed a great deal from both books. This comes back to our belief about artists, that only a few people are “real artists,” and that real artists are not afraid. Real artists create fearlessly. And what I have found is that we are all creative, and that we create with the sense of hope that what we are creating will be received. One of the things about The Artist's Way is that it talks about the dignity of process. And I think what you're talking about is: Am I a success if my work never sees the light of day? If I'm just doing it for myself alone. What happens as we do Morning Pages is that we become more authentic. And we, we begin to have impulses, do this, try that. And that as we become clearer in acting in our own behalf, we attract support.
So I have a website, JuliaCameronLive.com, which has my plays, my musicals, my poetry, a movie that I directed, they're all up there for people to watch them for fun and for free. I think that we have impulses that we learn to trust. And I think what you're talking about, is how do I keep from being bitter? The answer is that we do now sounding woo woo again, talking about something that some people might call channeling. And what it is is that we say on the page in writing, what should I do about X? And then we listen.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, it's interesting. I loved, and this, I know that this, that Artist Way is there. I guess you're writing a preface. So 30 years old and it still holds. And as someone who, you know, I have a book deal, my book will come out probably in a year or so. And it's very exciting. And the process of writing it was very fun, like very flow, very exciting. This part of the process is terrible as you know, but as someone who has, you know, probably The Artist's Way is probably one of the most widely read books in the world. And you've had many, many successful books, and it'd be easy to say, well, in that co-creative process, like, uh, to me, it makes a ton of they're great. It's, it's such an amazing tool set. So it makes of course a ton of sense success, why it would also be viable.
But for so many of us, we won't, maybe we won't, maybe no one will ever see our work, or our audience will be smaller than what we would like. And we live in such a weird distortion field with social media now and distributed media. And it's overwhelming. Would you update that part of The Artist's Way in any way, in terms of, I think you talk about it in the context of fame, and how fame is never can not be the desired result. It has to be the process. Do you feel, because now what's interesting for creatives is people are discovered on YouTube, or there are a million ways to distribute your work, right? You don't need a necessarily a book deal or you don't need a music deal, or you can make a movie on your iPhone. So in, in some ways we're seeing unfettered opportunity to create and publish without needing to jump through those traditional hurdles. Do you think that that's a good thing or a bad thing? Or how do you caveat that if people can't find an audience?
JULIA:
I think we all have an audience. And I think when we have the courage to create, we look for what I call believing mirrors. Believing mirrors are, are people who can accept our being large, who can support us in taking risks. And I think that when we create something, we just need to know, oh, a believing mirror will believe in this. I think you were asking me if I would make any change in The Artist's Way. I, I would say one thing, I have a chapter in the artist way called reading deprivation. This is very challenging for people. I say, I want you to spend a week not reading. This was before we had social media, cellphones and Instagram. And I'm saying, no, really, I want you to go on a fast and put all outside influences out of your mind. Not read. That means no computer. And people are threatened by it. But when they try it, they experience a waking up of their own intuition, a waking up of their own dreams, a waking up of their sense of strength. I think that what happens with working with the tools is that we move from being followers, to being leaders. And we find ourselves saying, why not?
ELISE:
It's interesting too, in the context of critics and you talk about, you talk about them as wet blankets, which I love, cuz I think it can be well-intentioned. You know, a parent who wants to keep us safe and doesn't want us to face rejection, or a friend who might just be self-involved, or you write about it too in, in academia. And the people who support us when we're young. So many of them themselves are maybe unexpressed creatives, or are teaching because they haven't been able to, to empower themselves to do—and that their own blocks can then not infect us, but can certainly thwart us unintentionally. It's not anyone's desire to be a wet blanket, but they might feel triggered or sad. And then they might in turn be inhibiting and kids from expressing themselves. It's funny. I read so much that the reading deprivation—there are times when I certainly feel like an overfull sponge and I need to cut off the spigot because I can't take anything more in, but it was interesting how you called that out as, as effectively like a numbing tool. I think that's probably accurate. But how do you know? And I loved, what did you call crazy makers, crazy makers in our lives? How can you identify when someone is an impediment or a threat to your own creative process? Is it obvious always when someone's a crazy maker, or a wet blanket, or critic?
JULIA:
Well, I got a letter last week from somebody that I have known for 40 years and I have always felt that they were for me, a believing mirror and that they encouraged me to become larger. And this letter was shocking to me. It was very negative. And it said things like, “You only talk to people who are famous.” And I'm thinking, well, well you don't know my friendships. I wouldn't call a kindergarten teacher friend of mine famous, but she's been a friend of mine for 25 years. Uh, and I think that what I realized reading the letter, it said, you're only talking to people who are important with the New York Times, and I thought, oh dear, I've crossed a boundary with this woman where she's feeling less than. And so she's tearing me down. And I, I was very hurt. I went to the page and asked for guidance, thinking what should I do?
Should I fire back a rebuttal and point out that she didn't know my current life? Or, what should I do? And I, I said, could I have guidance about blank? And I put her name in. And I heard “Julia, your need is compassion. She is alone and afraid. She has burned all her bridges behind her. She has no friendships. And now she's trying to blow up your friendship.” I found myself free. The guidance gave me a sense of higher perspective. So I haven't written a letter back and I probably won't. I think we need to entertain the possibility that people see our strength is threatening. So I think, uh, and you must have run across this as you've moved nimbly from career to career, that people would say to you, how dare you? And the answer is I, I dare because I trust.
ELISE:
That means a lot. And I think part of our power or part of, I guess, balanced power is that ability to look at some, a letter like that and be like, how does it, what does this make me feel? What part of this do I own? And then in a strange way, to be able to drop the ball, or to say like, I send you love, compassion, and peace, and I don't need to engage. Because, I think maybe as a woman, but I co this need to constantly stay entrenched. And you, you talk about this, a fair amount, the creation of boundaries, the not picking up the phone, the not sharing your work or sharing those parts of your life that need to be protected, and guarded, with people who can't be trusted to be safe with them. There's a lot of power I think, but it's very scary, right? To step away in the same way that it's very difficult to step away from criticism of any type, right? Like we, we stay so attached to that. Like there must be truth. Why do you think we believe that? Like, why do you think our first instinct is, it's me, or my work's bad or I'm a bad friend.
JULIA:
Again, I think it's this notion that we grow up being scolded for our size. We have, what I would call a creativity myth, which is very potent. We all know the story. It's a beautiful day in paradise. Adam and Eve are loling about enjoying each other's company, and then Eve, uppity Eve reaches up and plucks an apple from a forbidden tree. Uh, and all of a sudden the sky's open, and a booming voice says, “How dare you? I told you not to eat from that tree. From now on the two of you are not even go going to get along. You'll bear your children in pain and suffering.” Now I want you to imagine if we had a different creativity myth that we all grew up believing. It's a nice day in paradise and Adam and Eve are loling about, and Eve reaches up and plucks an apple, and the skies part and a booming boy says, “Far out. I made that apple red for a reason. It took you long enough.” So we, from that, we would learn that the creator admired our expansion. Supported our efforts to reach higher. We would learn that we could trust ourselves and our impulses. I think we lived in a largely Calvinistic society.
I want to read another poem if that's alright. It a little bit longer. So bear with me. It’s called “Remembering.”
I was not there when your mother bore you. Surely you came into this world, hungering and wet. We all do that. Surely you came like the rest of us, from that dark sea of souls, that sign that brings us forth and calls us back. We all share that. If this is true, and it is, even for you, why are you a broken glass smashed against the floor? Why not the sea grass on the ocean floor? Why not a smooth stone, a willow in the wind? Why do you break? Not bend? And even broken, why not mend? You do know how. Walk with me to the edge of the city. Take off your shoes and feel the earth. It is softer than a woman. It is safer than your father. It is water. It is air. It is where you are returning with this yearning you can't name. Cast off your shame. It's an old coat. Remember who you are. You are a star, a mountain, that fountain in the sun. Your heart is the velvet cave where birds sing. Are you remembering?
ELISE:
I love that. It's funny because you know, I know Artist Way, Seeking Wisdom is, is a six week program, but Artist Way is a 12-step program. And I know that you're in recovery, which again is triggering for some and, and the AA or this idea of a program is, is hard for some and a welcome reprieve for others. But you sort of talk about recovery and use some of that language withdrawal, et cetera, because it seems like in a sense, you're saying that we're all in recovery from some of these more basic, this remembering this, like getting back to ourselves, relinquishing those things, that it don't work for us anymore. And coming home in some ways to who we really are and how we're supposed to express our gifts in the world, which I, I love personally. It's interesting in terms of you talk about not wanting to be perceived as too woo woo.
And I know that concepts like God or AA or any of these things are hard and evoque criticism. And what's always been interesting to me is that people feel like that man, on Good Reads. They feel like it's their need to criticize instead of just being like, this isn't for me. What do you thing that is? Why do you think we have such a desire to remark on each other's work?Obviously there are professional critics, but this is like how we live our lives and judgment and criticism rather than just being like, I'm not gonna give attention to that because it doesn't resonate. Why is it just going back to that Calvinistic idea of the world?
JULIA:
Well, I, I wanna say something sort of bold here, which is listening to you I hear the pain of being misunderstood. I think you've been bold. You've stepped forward. And what I find I do with criticism, is I turn to humor. I find that when I have a sense of humor, I am able to not worry about the naysayer. And I wrote a crime novel called The Dark Room, and it got 19 good reviews. Uh, and then the 20th review was in The New York Times and it was negative. And I felt like, oh, I should put on sack cloth and ashes and go into the street weeping. And instead I thought, what is going on with this critic who was so powerfully negative. He hated Carl Jung. And my hero happened to love Carl Young. So what I did was write a little poem that said, this little poem goes out to Bill Kent, who must feel awful the way that he spent, his time critiquing Carl Jung, instead of on the work I'd done.
So I want to say to you, when you encounter somebody negative like that, man, who is remaining dark to write this little poem goes out to this man who doesn't think I should, or I can.
ELISE:
Oh, I love it.
I'm sure many of you guys have done The Artist's Way since it has been so, so widely read for 30 years, which is wild and incredible. And it is simple, but it also is full of incredible questions and hard questions that I think get at what it means to be human. And I couldn't find this passage when we were chatting about this idea of fame or recognition, which I think can be really so, so much of an eddy, particularly in this culture. And what I was trying to get at. And hopefully it came through is that it used to be that there were so many barriers to recognition. So it was easy to sort of, I mean, I remember this as a child, like it was just magazines, a handful of books, and now there's so much content we can directly express, which is incredible.
But then I think it makes it extra hard when you are questioning whether your work has any value. When it doesn't necessarily have a huge audience. And she writes this, this is in The Artist’s Way. “The point of the work is the work. Fame interferes with that perception. Instead of acting being about acting, it becomes about being a famous actor. Instead of writing being about writing, it becomes about being recognized, not just published. We all like credit where credit is due. As artists we don't always get it, yet focusing on fame, and whether we are getting enough, creates a continual feeling of lack. There is never enough of the fame drug wanting more, will always snap at our heels, discredit our accomplishments, erode our joy at another's accomplishment.: So I think this book too, it's one of those things like if you can take in, some of you have to take in all of it, if that makes sense, and this is good, good medicine.