Q+A: Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and The Listening Path

Cameron talks about working through resistance, media deprivation, and how to get creative with pandemic-era obstacles.

“Gentle sounds make for gentle lives,” writes best-selling author, poet, songwriter, filmmaker, and playwright Julia Cameron in the introduction to the first week of The Listening Path, her latest book on the creative art of attention. The book, which takes the form of a six-week-long course, builds upon her previous offerings about creativity, including The Artist’s Way, “a course in discovering and recovering your creative self” that artists, business professionals, and everyday people swear by. First published in 1992, it has since been translated into forty languages and sold over five million copies.The Listening Path asks readers to pay attention to the sounds of their lives in order to live sound lives by working with Cameron’s signature tools. Morning pages — three longhand written pages about anything and everything that crosses one’s mind upon first waking — are “the gateway to the listening path.” Artist’s dates — weekly “festive solo experiences,” or assigned play — are “the tool of attention.” And twenty-minute walks (or in my case, since it is winter in Michigan, drives) at least twice a week “nudge us into optimism.”

I took the Listening Path course and found its insights both illuminating and frustrating. The book helped me realize how I often fail to really listen to others and myself. It challenged me to listen beyond my immediate surroundings so I could hear from loved ones who had passed on and my higher power. It invited me to reflect on my relationships. It pushed me to tune in to my life with no judgement. Like so many wise teachers and artists before her, Julia Cameron understands that awareness is the first step to change, and change is essential to what so many of us are searching for — creative living. 

After finishing the course, I spoke with Cameron about the art of listening, working with resistance, artists’ dates in a pandemic, and how creativity can become not only what we do, but who we are. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Gabrielle Hickmon: I’m curious what you might say to someone who has gone through The Listening Path course, become a better listener, and now they’re nudged to work on something they feel has been done to death or that causes them great pain. How might you encourage them to still produce the work?

Julia Cameron: When people do The Listening Path, ordinarily it soothes them. It gives them a sense of gratitude and a sense of direction. The tools at the beginning of The Listening Path, the morning pages, the artists date, and the walks are all tools, which put you in touch with a benevolent something. So when people say “I’m afraid,” the answer is please try to ignore your fear and dive in anyway. Be sure you’re using the first three tools as a way to keep yourself grounded and calm.

GH: Some days, the morning pages flow, and other days they almost have to be dragged out kicking and screaming. Have you ever experienced that yourself?

JC: There are days when the morning pages are fluent and easy, and those are blessed days. I have had experience with days where the morning pages were uphill. I find that when I write [about] my resistance — “I don’t want to do these because…” — I use that as a cue. “I don’t want to do these because they’re boring.” “I don’t want to do these because they’re difficult.” “I don’t want to do these because I’ve said it all before.” When you use that cue, you are flushing up to the surface your resistance. 

I think it’s normal to have days where it’s very difficult to do pages. And that’s why when I introduce the tool to people, I say, I have a tool for you. It’s a nightmare. It’s work. And we have a work ethic in America that’s very strong, so people say, work, okay, I’ll work.

GH: Why is it so important for the artist’s date to be done alone?

JC: We have an expression: “the play of ideas.” We don’t realize that it’s a prescription — play and you will have ideas. The artist’s dates give you courage. It’s a risk to do it. It’s a little bit like if you have a divorce and the child wants to see the non-custodial parent alone, without their new significant other. We’re typically afraid to see the child alone for fear of what they’re going to say. Well, we’re afraid about artists’ dates because of what’s going to bubble to the surface. We intuitively know that we’re going to be confronted. And I think that creates resistance.

GH: To work with that resistance, is it just about continuing to work with the tools and committing to whatever they bring up?

JC: There’s a tool in the back of The Artist’s Way called blasting through blocks. I ask [the reader] to write down their anger and their fears connected to the step that they’re about to take and are resisting. Then you share them with someone who has proven himself to be a good listener — somebody who is able to hear you out without trying to fix you.

GH: When you wrote about believing mirrors [Note: Cameron defines believing mirrors as friends who “instill a sense of optimism and possibility” by really listening, seeing one’s biggest, truest self] in The Listening Path, it really caused me to stop and reflect on so many of my relationships. There were people who I thought would be believing mirrors, but then when I worked with the questions, they were not. Do you have any advice on how to stay in a relationship with those people who are not believing mirrors, but they’re not bad for you either? 

JC: What you do in your morning pages is you vent — you say, this is what I like. This is what I don’t like. This is what I like about Mary. This is what I hate about Mary. And as you ventilate them in morning pages, you’re able to be more intimate with them in real life. You become more authentically yourself, and then you relate more authentically to them. I think that morning pages create forgiveness. And I think what you’re talking about actually is disappointment. 

GH: Writing about it in the pages helps me both with forgiveness, like you said, but also with giving grace to myself for how I’m feeling and grace to them for who they are. I’m curious about why you say that you shouldn’t go back and read your morning pages.

JC: What I say is, wait. Wait about nine weeks and then go back and read them with a couple of different colored magic markers. What I find is that if you go back and read your pages all the time, it moves you into narcissism, and what we’re trying to do is move into action, not narcissism.

I think what we’re afraid of is that if we don’t go back and read them, we’ll miss something. But my experience with pages is that they are a nudge, and it’s a pressing issue, they will bring it up over and over again to you.

GH: I would love to hear your thoughts about listening and creativity for twenty-somethings. I grew up, live, and work in a very different world than the one that existed when you first began down your own artistic and listening path. Why are the tools relevant, no matter one’s generation, age, location, race, etc? 

JC: Well, I think the books hold up. They are relevant. There’s one tool that is different: the tool in The Artist’s Way called reading deprivation. If I were writing the book now, I would call it media deprivation, because I wouldn’t want you on your computer or going to Twitter or on FaceTime. I would want you to be actively fasting from those inputs. I think there’s a need for calm and that very often younger people are stressed. I think that the tools of The Listening Path are tools, which bring back sanity. I think they give people a break. 

GH: Do you have suggestions for in-house artists dates, since we can’t really go out right now?

JC: Yes. Take a bubble bath, do your fingernails and your toenails, listen to a piece of music that you don’t ordinarily listen to, sketch, make a vision board, dance. It just takes a little bit of ingenuity.

GH: Can you say more about this idea that, through the tools in The Artist’s Way and The Listening Path, creativity becomes not what you do, but who you are?

JC: The tools help you to focus, and they tell you what you authentically like. They are surprising. You’ll find yourself saying, I didn’t know I felt like that. You find yourself sort of unwrapping yourself like a present. 

Oftentimes we go into the tools thinking there’s such a thing as real artists, and that it’s a small little tribe of people who are completely fearless. What I have found through teaching for 40 years is that there is creativity in each one of us. It’s like a divine spark that we’re just waiting to discover. And what I have found is that real artists are people who have learned to create despite their fear, not without fear. 

The tools teach compassion and dismantle perfectionism. You find that you have a lot of things that you’ve been putting off because your perfectionist tells you, you must do them perfectly. And when you start saying I can do them however imperfectly, you move ahead. 

Nelson Mandela said we’re afraid of our true size. And what he meant by that is that we’re not afraid of being little; we’re afraid of being big. We say to ourselves, who do you think you are to dream big? And this is where the walking tool is a big help. When you walk out with a little me and you walk for some time, you encounter a big me. Artists’ dates also are very helpful here because you’re being benevolent to yourself. And when you’re benevolent to yourself, you begin to think, well, maybe the world isn’t so hostile.

GH: Because your world stops being so hostile.

JC: Exactly, exactly.

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