Mary O'Gara

Posts Tagged ‘Julia Cameron’

If you’re a writer, writing every day is as important to your creative health as brushing your teeth is to your physical health.   I don’t remember whether it was Heifetz or Menuhin or Casals who said that if he didn’t practice scales for a day, he could tell; if he didn’t do scales for a few days, the audience could tell.  Twyla Tharp writes about the importance of exercise and daily practice for dancers.

Daily work is probably the best-kept secret of the top artists in every creative field.   It’s certainly the secret the wanna-bes overlook.  You can work in a journal and keep your notes or work on napkins and toss them.   Personally, of course, I favor journals, but the essential part is working however you can on a particular day.

And here’s the bottom line.   If you don’t love writing so much that you’re willing to do five minutes a day of work on the craft of writing, you don’t love it enough to sustain the ups and downs of a career.

Why are writers the only creative group that actually seems to take pride in not working?

Why do I teach The Artist’s Way workshop (based on Julia Cameron’s book)?  Because it’s easier to coach writers who do their daily work.   Cameron makes it simple:  three pages of flow writing every morning to let the subconscious mind spill its contents, whether those contents are brilliant plots or threadbare whines, plus an hour a week devoted to filling up the creative well and entertaining your muse.   In later books she recommends a weekly exploratory walk.

Natalie Goldberg recommends timed writing, with a topic or starter sentence.  You still just let the words flow and let the subconscious mind pour out its thoughts.

Recently, I’ve been intrigued by the possibilities of sentences, and I’ve been spending my daily time playing with sentence structure.   But soon I’ll return to morning pages.  Maybe I’ll do morning pages and sentence structure, which feels like a musician’s scales.

For you it might be making lists or vocabulary study or some other skill.

However you do it, that daily five minutes keeps the mind focused on stories and looking for material.

Julia Cameron recommends an artist’s date a week–an hour or more when you and your inner artist go out to play and to refill the well of creative raw material.  Cameron also says writers and artists need two play dates a week when they’re writing prolifically.

Supreme self-care is something the corporate world seems to have mastered.   Creative workers–writers, artists, performers, composers–need extreme self-care, too.   And many of us are experts at creating reasons we can’t go play.

Right.  And then we reach brain dead instead.  We drag ourselves to computers and just don’t care.

So we all need first aid kits.   For some it’s music, for others perfumes or special oils.   Massages work for me.

But there are writers who make me feel alive and creative.  One evening off to read a book by Elizabeth Lowell, for example, has my brain believing in the magic of story and racing back to my own writing.   There are other writers whose works I love but whose books don’t have the same impact on me.

So now I have a new emerency first aid shelf for my inner artist.  It’s a few books by writers who always inspire me.  I don’t know why it took so long for me to think about that.   Oh, yeah, it’s because it’s so hard not to read those books the minute they come into the house.  But I’m strong.  I can do this.  Or–just buy more.