I’m a little more than half way through “The Right to Write,” by Julia Cameron. I’m going to be very dramatic here and say that it’s had a “profound” effect on me. Even before I started reading it, I had made a pretty serious commitment to my writing. I had decided that for the month of March I would write 2,000 words, or an hour’s worth, toward my novel every single night. And I found that once I made that commitment, I was also more interested in reading about writing (Not the other way around).

Julia Cameron’s best known book is “The Artist’s Way.” I have read parts of that and I was just a little turned off by the fact that I think she coddles her readers a little too much. She goes into these diatribes about how we are taught that our writing is bad because we don’t know correct grammar, etc. so I feel like this is really for people who are horrible writers. I, personally, feel like I am a halfway decent writer. My main problem is that I feel like I don’t have anything worthwhile to write about.She sort of does the same thing in “A Right to Write,” but I’m finding it very useful anyway.

First of all, she confirms a lot of things that I have found through self discovery. I read a lot about what writers say, and they are a pretty diverse lot. There are a lot of different camps. Julia seems to be in my camp. I believe that you have to let the writing take you where it wants to go. I could outline until the end of time, but when I start writing, my characters just take me where they want to go. I can’t exactly control it, and I feel like if I did, it wouldnt’ be nearly as interesting. She takes a personal approach to writing. I think that’s a female way of doing things and therefore, in my eyes, the “right” way.

The book is organized into essays and at the end of each essay is an assignment. I think these assignments are equally valid for people of all different levels of writing. I’ve only done a few of them, but I’m enjoying the essays nonetheless.

One thing I’ve done that she recommends is “morning pages.” This is 3 pages of long hand writing every morning. It’s basically journaling. I’m doing this in addition to my 2,000 words, which I usually do on an evening. The reason I said earlier that it has had a profound effect on me is because I essentially feel like I am in psychotherapy. I’m learning a lot about myself. Good things as well as bad things, and it’s profound to be confronted with these things. It’s making me a little bit moody and sensitive but I can’t help but feel that it is also making me understnad myself better. I think it’s creating a change in me that will have effects either good or bad. But essentially necessary changes.

So yeah, blobbedy blob blob blob. This writing stuff is a narcissistic thing to be sure, and probably not very inetersting to read about, but whatever, I’m a WRITER, dude, so I don’t care!

Larisa