“The Right to Write” – Julia Cameron

We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living.

…most of us write too carefully. We try to do it “right”. We try to sound smart. We try, period. Writing goes much better when we don’t work at it so much. When we give ourselves permission to just hang out on the page. For me, writing is like a good pair of pyjamas – comfortable.

What of writing were simply about the act of writing? If we didn’t have to worry about being published and being judged, how many more of us might write a novel just for the joy of making one? Why should we think of writing a novel as something we shouldn’t try – the way an amateur carpenter might build a bookcase or even a picnic table? What if we didn’t have to be good at writing ? What if we got to do it for sheer fun?

Where do we get the idea that putting words on a page is so dangerous?

The Time Lie – “If I had a year off, I’d write a novel” Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t.

The myth that we must have “time” – more time – in order to create is a myth that keeps us from suing the time we do have.

Lawyer Scot Turrow wrote his riveting novel Presumed Innocent on his daily commuter train.

“I think dashing off things is a good thing”, I answer. “We can dash off an awful lot of valid work relatively painlessly.”

The trick to finding time to write is to write from love and not with an eye to product.

Early in my writing life, I tried to polish as I went. Each sentence, each paragraph, each page, had to flow from and build on what went before. I thought a lot about all of this. I really worked at it. I toiled at being a writer. This meant long, stubborn hours writing and re-writing, crossing out and then adding back in again. Writing this way was frustrating, difficult, and disheartening, like trying to write a movie and cut it at the same time.

Writing is what we make from the broth of experience. If we lead a rich and varied life, we will have a rich and varied stock of ingredients from which to draw.