Finding Water the Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron

May 09, 2022 Post a Comment

I'one thousand re-reading Julia Cameron's Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance, one of her "sequels," if I can be permitted to telephone call them that, to her revolutionary creative recovery program, The Creative person's Style. I have a contemptuous suspicion that both Finding Water (2006) and its predecessor Walking in the World (2003)—as well as Cameron'due south myriad The Creative person's Way spin-offs, including The Prosperous Heart (2012), The Creative person's Way for Parents (2014), Information technology'southward Never Also Late to Begin Again (2016)—were written more than at the behest of her publisher than her muse. "Julia!" I imagine the publisher saying. "Nosotros need The Artist's Way 2!" "But I said all I have to say on this in the last book!" Julia protests. "Julia! The people want—need—more than! Also, money!" And she sighs, and she looks at her 12-week construction, and she thinks, certain, I tin come up with another variant of this, and she writes. And writes some more…

What you lot need to know: Neither Finding Water nor Walking in the Globe are almost equally good or life-irresolute as The Artist's Way. Because she did requite information technology all away in that first one: the "sequels" are just refinements. Non every bit good, not as profound. And still, I re-read both every couple of years as part of my The Creative person's Way refresher. And when I do, I always observe something "new," something I need to hear, larn, affirm at that particular joint in my artistic journey, personal life.

And on this week's trip with Julia Cameron—the adult female who, vi, seven years ago at present, gave me permission to think of myself every bit an artist, and what a frightening thought that was—I find Julia's mid-life insecurities reassuring. I honey reading about her sudden foray into music and pianoforte lessons at historic period 45. Her try to stage musicals in New York Urban center in her fifties. I'm not articulate if they're successful or not. I rather think they're non, or she'd requite me the happy catastrophe now, wouldn't she? Or is she holding information technology back so that I value the procedure regardless of what happened to the final production?

When I teach writing (or marketing, for that matter), I draw on a lot of Julia's ideas, and I've read and re-read her so many times now that you'd call up nothing would be new… Just today, this, if non new, is necessary, and it lifts my centre. Julia says:

One of the greatest disservices we tin do to ourselves as artists is to brand our work too special and too different from everybody else'south work. To the caste to which we tin can normalize our mean solar day, we take a chance to be both productive and happy. Let u.s.a. say, as is often the example, we are resistant to getting downwardly to work. We have a choice. We can buy into our resistance—Writer'due south block! Painter's cake!—or we can simply say, "I don't experience like working today, and I'll bet an awful lot of other people are in the same gunkhole."

I don't feel similar working today.

I don't feel like dealing with my shitty first drafts or my marketing analysis or my synopsis or anything, and OMFG, the taxes, I don't want to do that either. My process for today, I determine, is going to exist reading Julia. Because, today, I need to read near how on some days (months) she doesn't feel like working (more than 20 books later), I honey reading about her shitty first drafts, and agent's rejections of her novels. This is Julia-fucking-Cameron, later on all, writer of The Artist's Style, the former Mrs. Martin Scorsese, if anyone should accept people beating a path to her door for a volume, any book, surely it should exist her—how many copies of The Artist'south Style has she sold? (Four meg, at 2016, and she still tin can't identify every novel.)

I find this reassuring. Non considering Julia's suffered and struggled—if I could take that away from her, from anyone, I would. It's just… reaffirming. Nobody'southward entitled to success, fame, an easy ride, an easy second or seventeenth contract. We practice the work… because we must do the work.

I'm corrupting young minds part-fourth dimension these days, instruction journalism courses at a post-secondary establishment to "aspiring" writers, artists, photographers, journalists. I'thousand giving them all I've got a la Annie Dillard, although sometimes, I worry I'm instruction skills as obsolete and unvalued as typewriter repair. I promise the core of what I'1000 giving them is notwithstanding valid. They want to know how I congenital a freelance career, and nigh of what I did, had to practise, could do, doesn't precisely apply to them. But this does—I sent out 97 pitches before I sold my first story.

…spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right abroad, every time. Exercise non hoard what seems good for a afterward identify in the book or for another book; give it, give information technology all, give it now.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Their reaction to this story—near are horrified—tells me what their odds of succeeding are in whatsoever career or creative path they choose.

Perseverance. How hard are you willing to piece of work for this thing y'all love?

My industry has always been an industry of attrition. We the survivors, the "success" stories? In some ways, we're the idiots who persevere well by the point of reason.

One of my favourite things about re-reading The Artist'southward Way and Finding Water etc. are the encounters with the quotes Julia (I feel we're on a outset-name ground at present, it's been so many years) sprinkles in the margins. It'south here that I first "heard" George Nathan say that "Art is the sexual practice of the imagination," and Irving Layton affirm that "If poetry is like an orgasm, an bookish can exist likened to someone who studies the passion stains on the bedsheets."

Yesterday, I read this:

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is simply irritating to remember one would like to be somewhere else.

John Cage

Where I am right now is not awesome. Irritating doesn't begin to describe it. The family therapist, who is part of Flora'due south always-growing medical squad, and whose job, I remember, is to medicate me without drugs—although, actually, I keep on waiting for her to give me a marijuana prescription, information technology'southward the nearly useful thing she could do, except, of course, she doesn't need to, I can but go to the Co-op and get information technology—well, except that weed isn't really my thing, merely, OMFG, every fourth dimension I recall virtually the family therapist, I want to go stoned, where was I? The family therapist tells me not to think of this time every bit the new normal. She says this is still the crisis, a stage, things will get amend. As well, things have been much—much—worse. She counsels… promise, and focusing on the future.

I wish I could fire her. I'thousand not sure if she'south incompetent or if I'yard but being obtuse. But I can't alive on hope. I can't suffer today only by thinking that tomorrow—adjacent calendar month—adjacent year—2024—will exist easier, better, more functional.

Thich Nhat Hahn—my favourite monk—and the Jewish Buddhists I read (seriously, so many of the modern American Buddhist teachers come up from the Jewish tradition—why is that? I should find out) want me to be able to savour the sun on my pare, the dazzler of a blossom—Flora'due south excited smile every bit she puts together her Pastel Goth wardrobe for loftier school. And I practise. This, right now, is a happy moment. Unfortunately, odds are pretty practiced it will be followed by an hour in hell, and that hell is not all in my head, fuck you, Bodhisattva Junior.

Exhale.

When the hours in hell outnumber the happy moments by a substantial cistron, I dream of running away, and I apply for a task in Dubai, an arts residency in the mountains.

You: Yeah, what happened with that?

Jane: Didn't become the chore in Dubai. Got the arts residency.

I am very excited about the residency. But I'grand also enlightened that the 12 days in the fall that I volition spend away from the demands of my life, while giving me time for focused work and, likewise, uninterrupted sleep, will not change anything, in the present, in the long term. In fact, they can damage the piece of work I need to do in the present. "I can suffer now, I can sacrifice now, because I get those 12 days soon!"

This is the way near people think about their shitty jobs and vacations.

This is non the fashion I want to alive my life.

Neither does Julia. In the calendar week of Finding Water I'm reading now, her doc notes that she's tired and recommends renting a cabin in the country for the summer, so she can become abroad from it all and write.

I didn't want to rent a cabin in the country; I wanted to write right where I was, smack in the middle of New York City. I wanted to write about the excitement of the flower district, the garment commune, the antique district. I wanted to write nearly exactly where I was planted, in the rich soil of a bustling metropolis. I wanted to write, menses.

I had a animalism to simply lay some track, to put some words to my experience, to try to achieve an optimistic remainder by putting things onto the page.

…

I must be serene in the place where I am planted.

Me too, Julia, me too. (No hashtag.)

And then, I'k trying to effigy it out. To make the present inhabitable, fulfilling. And so many things completely beyond my control and unpredictable. What tin can I alter, affect? What anchors, routines, predictability can I create? Where tin can I thrive?

I've kept writing in the mornings, my Morning Pages as Julia taught me in The Artist'south Way all those years agone. (Half-dozen years now? Vii?) Trying to jump from the pages to creative, effective work when the mornings are calm. But life does not always allow this, and I cannot pressure myself. "I must prepare my own gentle pace," Cameron writes in Finding H2o. Something else, someone else is setting my pace. I must accept it and work with it. Non hope that tomorrow, maybe, adjacent month, maybe, for fuck'south sake, next twelvemonth, surely, will be improve.

What can I do today?

Sometimes, only the basics. Morning pages, Flora's electric current forenoon routine, Ender's breakfast, white potato fries and pickles for lunch. A meditation session that turns into a nap, considering, interrupted slumber. Apologies to the dog for non taking her out for a walk—ok, fine, five minutes, to the end of the aisle and back, hey, we did it!

Sometimes, a 12-hour marathon. I try to take Saturdays away, mini-arts residencies, maxi-Artist'south Dates. Sometimes, work, work, work, piece of work, and I am so happy—fucking family therapist and her chimera baths equally self-care suggestions—just because she hates her job, can she non imagine that what I want, more than annihilation, is more time for mine?

Sometimes, silence.

Today, a few hours with Julia.

Julia says,

When joy is elusive, we must actively seek information technology out. We must put ourselves with people and things that bring usa delight. Sometimes, when nosotros are at our most depressed, it tin can be difficult to even recall the joys in life. It is for this reason , that 1 more time nosotros must take pen in mitt. Turning to the page, number from i to 50. At present list fifty things which you love.

Practise it.

xoxo

"Jane"

PS If you lot're in yeg or yyc or thereabouts, Julia Cameron is coming to Edmonton on October 5! Of course I'm going.

TICKETS Hither

PS2 Here's a recent New Yorker commodity on Julia Cameron's utility to xx-somethings in an age of cocky-promotion:
https://world wide web.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-artists-way-in-an-age-of-self-promotion

PS3 And hither's a recent New York Times article on Cameron, kinda an overview/homage:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/style/julia-cameron-the-artists-mode.html

If whatsoever of my students are reading this, and you've clicked on the to a higher place article and read it, please note: if you ever write a sentence like this:

"On a contempo snowy afternoon, Ms. Cameron, who has enormous blueish optics and a nimbus of blonde pilus, admitted to the jitters before this interview."

I will neglect your ass. Today's lesson. WTF, NYT?