FEATURE SECTION
HEALTH ON AGING
go forward. And I found over my years of teaching
that my most poignant students were those who
were newly retired and searching for the path or
what to do next.
Miriam Knight: Well, certainly, finding meaning
in one’s life is just so challenging at any time but
particularly after retirement. How did you come
up with the process that you put forward in your
book?
Julia Cameron: Well, I’ve been teaching for 30
years, and I found myself putting forward ideas
that I thought would help people. And I found that
it was doing the basic Artist’s Way template that
led me into steps to help people with retirement.
Miriam Knight: And the basic Artist’s Way template starts with morning pages. How did you
actually develop that approach?
Julia Cameron: Well, morning pages came to
me, I would say quite bluntly, as inspiration. I was
a Hollywood screenwriter, and I had a movie for
Jon Voight that--he went from calling it brilliant to
suddenly I couldn’t find him on the phone.
And I retired to a town called Taos, New Mexico,
which is a little mountain community, and I lived
in a little adobe house at the end of a dirt road. I
would get up every morning and I would stare at
the Taos Mountain, which is a spiritual mountain,
and I would think, “What should I do next?” And I
would think, “Well, I’ll just try writing a little bit.”
I began writing three pages of morning writing
every morning. I found when I did, that I was led
into sort of new adventures and new ways of looking at things, so I thought, “There’s something to
these morning pages.” And that became the beginning of my Artist’s Way teaching.
Miriam Knight: Now, you say that it should be
sort of stream of consciousness. Is there something that you use to pump prime this flow of
words?
Julia Cameron: No, actually I find that when I
say to people, “I want you to write three pages of
stream of consciousness,” that very often they find
the first page and a half pretty easy, and then they
bump into an invisible wall. So I say, “Now, keep
writing.” When they keep writing they discover
27 | New Consciousness Review
I’ve been teaching for 30
years, and I found myself
putting forward ideas that I
thought would help people.
And I found that it was
doing the basic Artist’s Way
template that led me into
steps to help people with
retirement.
what I call pay dirt, and they begin to sort of dig
more deeply into their psyches.
Miriam Knight: I’ve actually been trying this
practice since I started reading this book in preparation for our interview, and I have to say I’ve
found it amazing. So, you started this in your original book, The Artist’s Way. How many years ago
was that?
Julia Cameron: I published The Artist’s Way in
1992, and since publishing it, some 4 million people have worked with the book, so that’s quite a
long time and quite a large audience of people
who were willing to experiment with the tools.
Miriam Knight: How does this book differ from
the original Artist’s Way program?
Julia Cameron: Well, when I wrote The Artist’s
Way, I found myself introducing people to the
concepts that I felt would be useful to them. So,
we had people digging into their own consciousness. And when I wrote this book I thought, “Well,
I think we should talk about some concepts that
haven’t been dealt with in The Artist’s Way,” for
example, giddiness. Very often when people retire
they experience a sense of giddiness, and they
don’t know quite where to go next. And I found
that I wanted to explore a sense of “now what?”
Miriam Knight: One of the next tools that you introduce in the book is called the artist’s date. I just
love that. Explain that to our readers please.