Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Julia Cameron has been an active artist for more than three decades. She is the author of more than thirty books, including such bestselling works on the creative process as The Artist’s Way, Walking in This World, and Finding Water. Also a novelist, playwright, songwriter, and poet, she has multiple credits in theater, film, and television, including an episode of Miami Vice, which featured Miles Davis, and Elvis and the Beauty Queen, which starred Don Johnson. She was a writer on such movies as Taxi Driver, New York, New York, and The Last Waltz. She wrote, produced, and directed the award-winning independent feature film God's Will, which premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival, and was selected by the London Film Festival, the Munich International Film Festival, and the Women in Film Festival, among others. In addition to making films, Cameron has taught film at such diverse places as Chicago Filmmakers, Northwestern University, and Columbia College. She is also an award-winning playwright, whose work has appeared on such well-known stages as the McCarter Theater at Princeton University and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Right to Write

Putnam Publishing Group

Chapter One

Begin

    I am sitting at a small pine table, facing east toward theSangre de Cristo foothills. My "view" has a horse tank that needs filling,a white fence with a small robin's-egg-blue gate, a birdbath interra-cotta with some of its figurines knocked off, a bright yellowgarden hose, I will use to fill the horse tank and the birdbath, an overgrowngarden plot, a bucket lying on its side, my small dog, Maxwell,soaking in the early spring sunlight like an optimistic sunbather on achilly beach day. When it warms up and that yellow hose has thawedout, I will fill the horse tank. When I warm up, I will tell you what Iknow about letting yourself write.

    The first trick, the one I am practicing now, is to just start whereyou are. It's a luxury to be in the mood to write. It's a blessing but it'snot a necessity. Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do itwell, but the point is to do it no matter what.

    Writing is like breathing. I believe that. I believe we all come intolife as writers. We are born with a gift for language and it comes to uswithin months as we begin to name our world. We all have a sense ofownership, a sense of satisfaction as we name the objects that we find.Words give us power.

    As toddlers, first we grab and then we grab with words. Everyword we learn is an acquisition, a bit of gold that makes us richer. Wecatch a new word and say it over and over, turning it like a richnugget in the light. As children, we hoard and gloat over words.Words give ownership: we name our world and we claim it.

    As children, we learn new words at an astonishing clip. Wordsgive us leverage: "Me go with Mommy!" Or, "Mommy stay" Childrenare specific and direct. They don't beat around the bush. Theirwords are personal and powerful. They are filled with will and intent.They are filled with passion and purpose. Children trust the power ofwords.

    If words give us power, when do we start to lose our power overwords? When do we start to feel that some of us are "good" at languageand even have a shot at being "writers" while the rest of us justhappen to use it and don't dare consider ourselves in that league?

    My guess is that for most of us school is where this sorting startsto happen. School is where we are told, "You're good with words ..."The neat teacherly scrawl, diagonally written across the top right-handcorner of the top page of, say, a geography report on Scandinavia,"Well written."

    Well written--what does that mean? In school it usually meansclear, orderly thinking. Neat enough grammar. Lots of orderly facts.It may also mean things we are taught, like "topic sentences" and"transitions." Very often it does not mean words that sing off thepage, innovative word combinations, paragraphs of great free associationsand digressions--all the gifts a young poet or novelist mighthave and want to use but not find useful under the scholarly disciplineof an academic paper.

    What happens when writing of that kind shows up in school papers?Too frequently, it's another margin quote, this time negative:"You stray from the topic a bit here" or "Stick to the point." It is arare teacher who takes the time and care to praise the kind of writingthat doesn't fit into an academic paradigm. It's as though scholasticallywe're on a pretty strict diet: "Not so much pepper here."

    Not so much pepper. Not so much spunk. Not so much humanity,please. Academically we are inclined to a rather pedestrian prosedenuded of personality and passion, perhaps even a bit elevated intone as if writing is something to be done only from the loftiest ofmotives, a kind of distillate of rationalism trickled onto the page.

    In countries and situations where writing is forbidden, it takes onprimacy. In prisons, people scratch their message into stone, ontodirt. On desert islands, messages are shoved into bottles and set to sea.When communication is made to seem actively impossible, the humanwill to communicate rears its head and people willingly risk death anddismemberment to do it.

    This is healthy.

    In our current culture, something much less healthy is afoot.Writing is not forbidden, it is discouraged. Hallmark does it for us.We shop for the card that is "closest" to what we wish to say. Schoolsdrill us about how to say what we want to and the how-to involvesthings like proper spelling, topic sentences, and the avoidance of detoursso that logic becomes the field marshal and emotion is kept atbay. Writing, as we are taught to do it, becomes an antihuman activity.We are forever editing, leaving out the details that might not bepertinent. We are trained to self-doubt, to self-scrutiny in the place ofself-expression.

    As a result, most of us try to write too carefully. We try to do it"right." We try to sound smart. We try, period. Writing goes muchbetter when we don't work at it so much. When we give ourselvespermission to just hang out on the page. For me, writing is like agood pair of pajamas--comfortable. In our culture, writing is moreoften costumed up in a military outfit. We want our sentences tomarch in neat little rows, like well-behaved boarding-school children.

    Burn down the school. Save the books, perhaps, but get theteacher to tell you the real secrets: What does he write and read as aguilty pleasure? Guilty pleasure is what writing is all about. It is aboutattractions, words you can't resist using to describe things too interestingto pass up. And forget lofty motives.

    I don't write from lofty motives--I never have. In sixth grade,when I wrote my first (very) short stories, it was to snag the attentionof Peter Mundy--Peter was a newcomer to St. Joseph's grade school,Mrs. Klopsch's class. He'd moved north from Missouri. He brought asouthern accent and chestnut hair, hair the color of a jar of Tupelohoney, a physical look as sweet as the something southern that whisperedthrough his voice. I wanted Peter to be my boyfriend. I wantedhim to notice me. And so, I set about wooing him by writing himstories.

    Twenty years later, long after he'd dated Peggy Conroy instead ofme, Peter told me I had captured his heart with my writing, "I justchickened out."

    Peter may have chickened out, but in the act of chasing him withpencil and paper, I discovered a bigger chase, the thrill of chasinganything with words.

    Writing is a lot like driving a country blacktop highway on a hotsummer day. There is a wavery magical spot that shimmers on thehorizon. You aim toward it. You speed to get there, and when you do,the "there" vanishes. You look up to see it again, shimmering in thedistance. You write toward that. I suppose some people might call thisunrequited love or dissatisfaction. I think it's something better.

    I think it's anticipation. I think it's savoring. I think it's tasting agreat meal from its scent on your nostrils. I do not have to eat freshlybaked bread to love it. The scent is nearly as delicious, nearly as muchthe satisfaction as the thick slice of bread slathered with butter andhomemade apricot jam.

    The brain enjoys writing. It enjoys the act of naming things, theprocesses of association and discernment. Picking words is like pickingapples: this one looks delicious.

*

The act of writing, the aiming at getting it right, is pure thrill, pureprocess, as exciting as drawing back a bow. Hitting a creative bull's-eye,a sentence that precisely expresses what you see shimmering onthe horizon--those sentences are worth the chase--but the chase itself,the things you catch out of the corner of your eye, that's worthsomething too. I love it when I write well, but I love it when I write,period.

    When I began this essay, it was a blue, cloudless day. As I finish it,big weather has come up. Fat, dark clouds are spitting a petulant rain.The wind is gusting in stiff puffs fragrant with spring. I don't need tofill the horse tank. The rain is doing that nicely. My little Maxwell hascome inside and is cuddled by my feet. The day, like this essay, beganone place and moved to something else entirely.

    Kabir tells us, "Wherever you are is the entry point," and this isalways true with writing. Wherever you are is always the right place.There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps ofthe soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.

    Left to its own devices, writing is like weather. It has a drama, aform, a force to it that shapes the day. Just as a good rain clears the air,a good writing day clears the psyche. There is something very rightabout simply letting yourself write. And the way to do that is tobegin, to begin where you are.

Begin

Initiation Tool

This tool puts you directly into the water. Take three sheets of 8 1/2by 11 paper. Start at the top of page one and for three pages describehow and what you are feeling right now. Begin where you are--physically,emotionally, and psychologically. Write about anything andeverything that crosses your mind.

    This is a free-form exercise. You cannot do it wrong. Be petty,critical, whining, scared. Be excited, adventurous, worried, happy. Bewhatever and however you are at this moment. Get current. Feel thecurrent of your own thoughts and emotions. Keep your hand movingand simply hang out on the page. When you have finished writingthree pages, stop.

Excerpted from The Right to Writeby Julia Cameron Copyright © 1999 by Julia Cameron. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.