Julia Cameron - The Right to Write (1999)

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Writing is medicine. It is an appropriate antidote to injury. It is an appropriate companion for any difficult change.

Julia Cameron
When we write about our lives we respond to them. As we respond to them we are rendered more fluid, more centered, more agile on our own behalf. We are tendered conscious.

Julia Cameron
As children we hoard and gloat over words. Words give ownership: we name our world and we claim it...Children trust the power of words.

Julia Cameron
As a writer, I find holidays often disturbing, not liberating, in their disruption of tempo, their open-ended time.

Julia Cameron
Writing is like listening to a melody line in my head. Note by note, it knows where it wants to go. I follow it and lay it down. I can pare it, shape it, and polish it later...My job is to take down the dribs and drabs - to free-associate, if you will, knowing that the associations have their own plans for where we're going with all this.

Julia Cameron
Our modern ideas of 'functioning' through things are really quite inhuman. We have this idea that no matter what is going on we still have to color between the lines, act normal.

Julia Cameron
I am what I am again: a writer. I have metabolized the injury into art.

Julia Cameron
I believe that what we want to write wants to be written. I believe that as I have an impulse to create, the something I want to create has an impulse to want to be born. My job, then, is to show up on the page and let that something move through me, in a sense, what wants to be written is none of my business.

Julia Cameron
We talk about self-expression but need to pause and remember that self-expression requires a self to express...

Julia Cameron
Writing responds well to some gentle scheduling. A day job not only promotes solvency, it promotes creativity as well.

Julia Cameron
We all have time to write. We have time to write the minute we are willing to write badly, to chase a dead end, to scribble a few words, to write for the hell of it instead of for the perfect and polished result.

Julia Cameron
Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn't necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of heart, the first sentence, however tentative and awkward, can lead to a desire to go just a little further.

Julia Cameron
We should write, above all, because we are writers, whether we call ourselves that or not.

Julia Cameron
Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.

Julia Cameron
Taking the time to write in our lives gives us the time of our lives. As we describe our environments, we begin to savor them. Even the most rushed and pell-mell life begins to take on the patina of being cherished.

Julia Cameron
We call what we write brainchildren, and just as a pregnancy must not be overstressed and artificially hurried for fear of damaging or aborting the child, so, too, a piece of work asks that we not try to force it in unnatural directions.

Julia Cameron
Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.

Julia Cameron
Writing-and this is the big secret-wants to be written. Writing loves a writer the way God loves a true devotee. Writing will fill your heart if you let it. It will fill your pages and help to fill your life.

Julia Cameron
We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. we should write because writing is good for the soul. we should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

Julia Cameron
For most of us, the seductive and unstated part of "if I had enough time" is the unstated sentence "to hear myself think." In other words, we imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook— if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for what is trying to bubble up today.

Julia Cameron
Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.

Julia Cameron