Write for Life
Write For Life - What is it?
In Cameron’s own words - it’s her “love letter to writing”.
Thirty years on from publishing The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron has turned her attention to a shorter and more focused program - just six skill-building chapters to be practiced over 6-weeks.
Write For Life, Creative Tools for Every Writer is her third, shorter offering in three years - and she speaks with the authority of a teacher who has published over 40 books.
As with all of her books - it’s an invitation, a process, a means and methodology for staying creatively connected to our wisdom and purpose.
This is how we can keep our pens on the page.
Specifically - the book begins with the basics:
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Write for Life is a six-week program for anyone working on a writing project, from the first-time writer to the seasoned one. This book is an invitation to begin, stick with, and finish your project. Consider it a companion on your journey from conception to completion. These pages compile the tips and tricks I myself have relied on to write more than forty books - including this one. It is my hope that this book will serve you as both a guide over the next six weeks, and a handbook to be returned to as you continue writing, well beyond the next six weeks. This book will get you in motion, keep you in motion, and serve as a reference as you finish your draft and move into the revision phase.
It is the act of writing that makes us writers.
Write for Life, p 1
Every one of her books is a testament to her commitment to remaining creatively engaged in life - they also reflect the tried and true methods of providing a structure, tools, and support - the bedrock success factors of the 12-step process that “works when you work it”.
Fundamentally that involves committing to a course of action in which we are accountable to both a power greater than ourselves - and one or more peers.
Over the course of six weeks, we’ll begin a process -
Priming the Pump
Begin Where You Are
Trust Your Process
Resist Your Resistance
Dismantle Your Perfectionist
Celebrate Your Achievement
We’ll also employ the time-tested & proven tools - three of which were introduced thirty years ago -
Morning Pages, a daily writing exercise
An Artist Date, a weekly time out - a play date for an hour or two
Walking, a daily routine designed to provide one’s imagination with the “long inefficient happy idling; dawdling and puttering it needs.”
This daily recommendation has been suggested by the authors cited in this volume - and specifically increased from the two or three times weekly twenty-minute walk in the earlier books. (My point is - don't let 'daily' intimidate you - just get started!)
Along with those added in this volume include:
The Daily Quota of writing on your project is one you set. What matters most is regularity - and in her words - “setting the bar low”. Two or three pages a day guarantees that you will be able to accomplish it. “Write daily, and feel the thrill of accomplishment. Take pride in your progress. This is your “creative upkeep”.
Writing Stations - whether is a ‘room of one’s own’ which is a luxury many cannot afford - or the corner of a couch, a window seat or a spot at a local cafe or library - make it yours. “The important point is that you find these locations comfortable and enticing to write.”
A critic commenting on her tools in an earlier book, referred to them as “simple and repetitive” - in a way that was meant to disparage them.
Cameron counters that it’s precisely how they are meant to be, simple!
When you have completed our six-week journey through Write for Life - you will:
have adopted a conscious and methodical approach to your writing practice
have our group support in making and sustaining the changes in your routine that will help get you started, overcome procrastination, and keep your focus on the page
invite the expansion that comes from being “fascinated by our own daily progression” and the risk-taking we engage in when we allow our #MorningPages to “coax us into greater creativity”.
If you opt into a facilitated group - we’ll explore our insights, review the tasks, and offer an accountability checkin during six 90-minute weekly group sessions.
Most significantly, you will have learned to embrace the future confidently.