Cameron: Writing As a Spiritual Practice
"Do not call procrastination laziness. Call it fear. Fear is what blocks an artist. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of not finishing. The fear of failure and of success. The fear of beginning at all. There is only one cure for fear. That cure is love. Use love for your artist to cure its fear. Stop yelling at yourself. Be nice. Call fear by its right name."—Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (Tarcher 1995).
When I suggest to friends that they consider writing a spiritual practice, most respond they don't know how to start or have no writing talent. It is not their gift. The best antidote to this fear of writing or inadequacy as a writer is Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. Cameron suggests starting to write by rising in the morning and writing "morning pages," which she calls the "primary tool of creative recovery." These are three longhand pages of whatever comes into our mind. These reflections do not have to make "sense." Instead, writing them is intended to be a listening exercise in the morning: imagining God's hand moving through our hands as we write.
I have also experienced this exercise as a clearing or cleaning out of the garbage in my head. Fearful thoughts stay powerful when they remain in my head, but some of their power over me goes away when I put them on paper. Perhaps, in some way, I am turning them over, releasing them to God to begin the creative process.
Cameron recommends we pray for guidance every night and ask for answers. The morning pages are a process of listening for the answers as the day begins.
I often write on the inside covers of books when I start reading them. As I reread Cameron's book, I pull back her cover and observe a date twenty years ago. Memories flood in of the book group at St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, with which I read The Artist's Way over one summer. I especially remember Lee Nix, the chair of my discernment committee, who was a mentor to me and an encourager of creativity. Today, there is also an Artist's Way for Retirement!
I believe it enhances the experience to read, write, and work through a book like The Artist's Way with a book study group—to go together through the book's many suggested activities and exercises.
Today, I am also reminded of how powerful writing down a date can be in the context of spiritual writing.
