The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life

Cameron, Julia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0333782038 ISBN 13: 9780333782033

Publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2000

'We should write because it is human nature to write' Julia Cameron

For those jumping into the writing life for the first time and for those already living it, the art of writing will never be the same after reading this book. Provocative, thoughtful and exciting, you'll return to it again and again as you seek to liberate and cultivate the writer residing within you.

This isn't a book of rules, which can stifle creativity - and certainly not about how to write that query letter, how to find a market for your work, or how to find a agent. It's about using writing to bring clarity and passion to the act of living. The secret's in breaking loose from the grip of your established thought process, to unleash the wave of creativity striving to express itself within.

Here are techniques illustrative stories to help you make writing a natural, intensely personal part of life. And this book includes the details of Cameron's own writing processes when creating her best selling books, which include the phenomenal and world famous The Artist's Way and Vein of Gold.

Review:

Writing, for Julia Cameron, is neither solely vocational nor avocational: it is a way of life. It comes first thing in the morning, while the horses are waiting to be fed; it happens at the kitchen counter, while the onions are sautéing; it takes place on "dates" at café tables shared with like-minded friends; it unfurls in the mind as the 65 pickup "bucks over the rutted dirt roads like a stiff-legged bronco." The more than 40 brief personal essays that make up The Right to Write are an unyielding affirmation of the writing life and a denigration of all that gets in the way: busy schedules, procrastination, insecurity, lack of writing space, a day job--you get the point. Cameron's common-sense advice is liberating to anyone who has felt hampered by making a big deal out of writing (this "tends to make writing difficult. Keeping writing casual tends to keep it possible"), by not having the time to write ("Get aggressive. Steal time"), or the like. If you can relate to a spirit that compares writing to revelation, prayer and Zen pursuits, that might just attribute misguided communication to Mercury retrograde simpatico, then you will find much to embrace here. And you will never, never again dream of waiting for that commitment-free sabbatical in the south of France to get your writing project under way. --Jane Steinberg

Review:

"THE ARTIST'S WAY by Julia Cameron is not exclusively about writing--it is about discovering and developing the artist within whether a painter, poet, screenwriter or musician--but it is a "lot" about writing. If you have always wanted to pursue a creative dream, have always wanted to play and create with words or paints, this book will gently get you started and help you learn all kinds of paying-attention techniques; and that, after all, is what being an artist is all about. It's about learning to pay attention." --Anne Lamott, Mademoiselle

"The premise of the book is that creativity and spirituality are the same thing, they come from the same place. And we were created to use this life to express our individuality, and that over the course of a lifetime that gets beaten out of us. [THE ARTIST S WAY] helped me put aside my fear and not worry about whether the record would be commercial." --Grammy award-winning singer Kathy Mattea

"Julia Cameron brings creativity and spirituality together with the same kind of step-by-step wisdom that Edgar Cayce encouraged. The result is spiritual creativity as a consistent and nourishing part of daily life." --Venture Inward