The Sound of Paper

by Julia Cameron

  When we think about our creativity in terms of training, we begin to understand the importance of working despite our moods. Just as a determined and devoted runner runs despite the weather, we need to learn to weather our moods and work on our stormy days as well as those when we are in a sunny mood. Putting in our daily jot of time at a typewriter or at the easel teaches us that we can produce when we don't feel like it, when our censor is shrieking that what we are doing is no good and of no earthly good to anyone.

  If we wait for the time when we have our inner censor's approval, that imaginary time when it bows gracefully and says, "Yes, you're a wonderful artist, go to it," we may wait a very long time indeed; in fact, we may wait our entire career for such a green light. In my experience, red flashing lights are what the cen­sor loves to issue. That, and dire warnings: "This book is terrible. Don't write it" is what my censor has said to me over what, in clear-eyed retrospect, turned out to be some of my better work.

  And yet, time itself is not the issue it appears to be. In order to use our time freely, in order to grab at the small windows of time we have available, we must train our inner censor to stand aside and allow us to work. The training of the censor, the taming of the censor, is one of the primary accomplishments of Morning Pages. Each day as we take to the page, our censor weighs in with opinions. "Oh, you are so negative, so ungrateful, such a spiritual midget," the censor opines as we lay our life onto the page. We learn to keep writing. We learn to tame time. We learn to write through the censor's critiques. We learn to say, "Thank you for sharing," and keep right on moving. In short, we do not kill our

  censor off, but we learn to evade it. We learn to live and to work while ignoring its steady stream of negatives. This saves us a lot of time. We do not pause to argue with our censor when we are writing Morning Pages. We simply move straight onto the page. This is a portable, transferable skill. We learn not to stop and engage with the censor, that great time waster, to and move straight ahead

  into our work.

  The inner censor doesn't really want us to work. It wants us to spend all of our time dealing with it. It is like a greedy lover who has a penchant for staging dramas. There will never be enough drama to satisfy the censor. It has an incurable, insatiable appetite for drama, and this is why as you progress in your work, it will progress in its nastiness. Let us say you have written a fine first novel. The censor now cannot use its old line "You are an amateur author." Now that you are published, it must come up with some­thing more sinister, and so it says, "You are a one-book author." If we bother to engage in a debate over this, we are exactly where the censor wants us: wasting our precious work time over a block. This is what so many therapists fail to realize. They think that focusing on the block will dissolve it. Actually, focusing on a block simply enlarges it. Blocks are an everyday part of the artist's life, and they range from the scary to the very scary. No one is immune to them, and those who claim they are are just whistling in the dark. The trick with a block is to accept the fact that it is there and to work anyway. This is best done by working in small doses, slipping work past the nose of the guardian gargoyle. "Just a little sketching," just divert its attention and accomplish what we can.

  There are any number of excellent tricks for doing this, and chief among them is the simple lie. We tell the censor, "What I am

  doing right now doesn't count. It's just a rough draft." The censor allows rough drafts because it thinks it will get its perfectionist innings in later—and many a rough draft holds up surprisingly well and a further draft can be designated "still rough," and so on through repeated drafts or sketches while the censor stands to one side, waiting for its chance to slay us—which keeps being gently postponed.

  The habit of daily work lulls the censor. Daily work is so much like Morning Pages that the censor lapses into torpor. It knows very well that pages can be accomplished despite its best attempts to the contrary. If we work daily and with the same studied non­chalance, the censor begins to be convinced that it can't really stop us and so it will curl up, snoring loudly, and make a show of indif­ference to our efforts—which is exactly what we want it to do.

  At bottom, the censor is a lot like the hundred-foot-high dust devils dancing during a drought. It looks dangerous. It acts dan­gerous. But it is not dangerous. As we learn to think of our cen­sor's attacks as time-wasting diversions, mere dust devils, we begin to claim for ourselves the amounts of time we do have—and that is often far more time than we have previously acknowledged.

  Trust

  TAMING TIME

  Try this: Most of us procrastinate when it comes to time. We tell ourselves we "don't have enough time to do X," an activity or undertak­ing that frightens us. The truth is that it is not our lack of time that is the issue, it is our lack of courage. Take pen in hand and number from 1 to 5. List five tasks you've been procrastinat­ing about, telling yourself you had "no time." Here are some examples:

  Rereading my play

  Cleaning up my work area

  Sorting through my financial papers

  Doing my laundry

  Writing a letter to Bob

  Take time in your own hands now, and choose one task from your list to execute. Within a week, try to execute your whole list, proving to yourself that you do have time.

  Outside my study window, two white Arabians and a bay graze peacefully. They are not troubled by the day's length, their bolt of time and how to fill it. For them it is a simple matter of appetite and trust. They will reach for mouthful after mouthful of what they want and need, and the sun will rise in the sky, arc across it, and set in the west without any further effort on their part.

  Many times, when we are in doubt of our creative trajectory, it is because we are lacking in trust. We do not trust that a peaceful unfolding awaits our appetites. We are afraid to reach for what we want, afraid that as we reach, what we hunger for will be snatched from us. We believe in a capricious and withholding God.

  In times of doubt or trouble, it is worthwhile to try out this phrase: "If everything were in divine order, then I could gently

  expect ." We might find that we could expect time

  enough or support enough to finish our project. We might find that we could expect a financial flow sufficient to our needs. The "what we could expect" might surprise us, identifying some pre­viously unacknowledged want: company enough, perhaps, when we had not known we were lonely.

  Late in his long and illustrious career, Joseph Campbell remarked that in every life could be seen the tracery of destiny. He believed that as we aged, we could begin to trace the patterns in our own life, begin to sense when we were unfolding properly and when

  we were trying to force a direction that ran counter to our in­tended path.

  I believe we can encounter the tracery that Campbell speaks of, but I believe that many of us are fearful, and we expect to encounter "no" where we might just as easily find "yes." Our im­aginations, both active and causal, tend toward the negative. Im­pending doom looms on our creative horizon but seldom visits. And yet there is a strain in the prolonged wince that we often endure as we brace ourselves for the worst. We do this from a habit of doubt and strain. In times of doubt and strain, there is another phrase worth using: "I am grounded in my spiritual purpose; there are no emergencies."

  Most of us live with a continual sense of emergency. We have a fear that we are too late and not enough to wrestle a happy destiny from the hands of the gods. What if there is no emergency? What if there is no need to wrestle? What if our only need is receptivity, a gentle openness to guidance? What if, like the Arabian horses grazing outside my window, we are able to simply trust?

  When we trust ourselves, we become both more humble and more daring. When we trust ourselves, we move surely. There is no unnecessary strain in our grasp as we reach out to meet life. There is no snatching at people and events, trying to force them to give us what we think we want. We become what we are meant to be. It is that simple.
We become what we are, and we do it by being who we are, not who we strive to be.

  We are right-sized. We are who and what we are meant to be. All that we need, all that we require, is coming toward us. We need only meet life, not combat it. We need only encounter each

  day's questions, not raise a fist at the heavens over the questions of tomorrow.

  "Just relax" is not advice that most of us respond to easily. We do better with a more active phrase: Focus on the now. In the pre­cise now, no matter how painful our life events, we are always all right. What may be hard is always bearable—not perhaps in our projected future, but there, in that moment, precisely now.

  The horses outside my study window live in the now. They meet life with the gentle expectancy that as they move their velvet muz­zles across the green earth, they will be fed and life will be good. For most of us, a similar faith—I will be fed; life will be good—feels radical. And yet we are creatures made by the Great Creator and shaped exactly as it would have us. What is there to fix? What is there to be punished for? We are as we were intended to be.

  Good Husbandry

  TRUST

  Try this: It has been said that faith is theoreti­cal, while trust is grounded in our actual expe­rience. Take pen in hand and list five situations you do not trust to work out. For example:

  /. Finding a new apartment

  Doing a successful rewrite

  Healing the rift in my friendship with Doris

  Finding the right form for my relationship

  with Ted

  Finding a new job I actually like

  Take pen in hand again. Now list five situa­tions that have already worked out despite your lack of trust. For example:

  1 Fixing Act II of my play

  Finding a piano I could afford

  Finding a successful diet

  Negotiating my contract

  Finding proper day care

  A scorching westerly wind again blows through the cottonwoods. The underbellies of the leaves flash silver. Even with the haze of dust-filled air created by drought, New Mexico is a mir­acle of changing light. Stands of Russian olives flash bright as dimes; the sage, too, is silvery. Although one of the poorest states, New Mexico is the colors of money—silver, gold, and green sprouting from the copper earth.

  Seeking to end a creative drought, we must tap our inner well. We do so by fighting depression and tapping into our capacity for attention. A drive along a dusty highway becomes an exercise not in sameness but in differences. A dust devil dances on the horizon. The blacktop road shimmers in the heat. Cattle graze hopefully on dry and brittle grasses. It is a good sign the grasses are yet here. For days now, the afternoon air has taunted the senses with a hint of rain. Like a fickle lover, the clouds promise to come across, and then they don't. Creeks and riverbeds are arid vessels, holding the scantiest trickle where torrents like to flow. The acequia are dry. There is no water to irrigate. The older Spanish people take buck­ets and clamber down the creek beds for water for their gardens. Food is grown here, in the Hispanic community, not bought, and the lack of water translates to a lack of food. No one waters at mid-day. It wastes the water and burns the plants. Only at twilight do the gardeners emerge, cool as shadows, sloshing their buckets. They

  give each plant just enough, and with their careful husbandry the gardens still thrive, rich with zucchini and rhubarb. The apple and apricot crops this year will be lean, impacted by the drought.

  When we give our lives the gift of attention, our consciousness blossoms. Attention is an act of love, an act of connection. Like a child in a good home, our art responds to a nurturing atmosphere. Ideas nudge their way toward the fore. It is as if we are being trusted with new insights, trusted because we have shown our capacity for attention. The daily writing of Morning Pages takes attention. So, too, does the practice of Walks. Just up the road from my old adobe house there grazes a herd of buffalo—shaggy and stub-legged. Walk a little farther, and you meet the llamas, like doe-eyed, furry camels. Of course, not all Walks feature such exotic denizens, but all Walks do feature insights. We use the phrase "body of knowledge," and that phrase is quite literal. Our body has knowledge to give us—that, and inspiration.

  Writer and teacher Brenda Ueland tells us: "I'll tell you what works for me, and you must do it alone and every day: a long, five-or six-mile walk." Such good advice notwithstanding, most of us can't indulge in such a long daily ramble. But we can walk a little, and when we do, the rewards are immediate.

  "Julia, I thought I had no ideas, that I was completely burned out. But then I started walking and the ideas started coming again," I am often told. A few crowded city blocks can still yield the cat in the window box or the lovely cornice above a door. The quality of light shifts dramatically from neighborhood to neighborhood in Manhattan. The city is an island, and with focused attention one can note the fog-wrapped western shore touching the Hudson. All environments are earmarked by minute markers, special and spe-

  cific. Our focused attention brings us a wealth of experience, and that, too, is a literal phrase. We become rich with images and impressions, fine distinctions that confer distinctions on our art. It has been remarked that genius is largely a matter of energy. It is certainly true that great artists are characterized by great energy— a vibrancy we can cultivate by engaging fully from moment to moment. Great writers, like the Brontes, inhabited ordinary and limited lives. What was unlimited was the quality of attention they brought to bear on their experience. We, too, can bring attention to the fore of our lives. Oscar Hammerstein remarked, "A hun­dred million miracles are happening every day." He is right.

  GOOD HUSBANDRY

  Try this: Most of us have many small areas in which we fail to husband ourselves. We see a problem, but we neglect to address it. We pro­crastinate about self-care, telling ourselves that we will get to it once our creative project is finished. The truth is that a little self-care can make finishing our creative projects much eas­ier. This exercise is called Filling in the Form. Its benefit is a sense of well-being. Take pen in hand. List three tiny, benevolent changes you could make in the following areas:

  1. Your bathroom

  1.

  2. 3.

  2. Your bedroom

  1.

  2. 3.

  3. Your living room

  1.

  2. 3.

  4. Your kitchen

  1.

  2. 3.

  5. Your car

  1.

  2. 3.

  6. Wardrobe from shoulders to top of the head

  1.

  2. 3.

  7. Wardrobe from shoulders to waist

  1.

  2.

  3.

  8. Wardrobe from waist to knees

  1.

  2. 3.

  9. Wardrobe from knees to floor

  1.

  2. 3.

  Getting at It

  10. Tools you use for your art 1. 2. 3.

  Filling in the Form is a deceptively simple yet powerful exercise in self-worth. Execute one tiny change from each category.

  One of the most effective ways we sabotage ourselves from a life in the arts is by waiting for that imaginary day when "it" will be "easier." We think of going to the page or to the easel, and then we think, "It's too hard. If I wait a little, it won't be so hard."

  Waiting for art to be easy, we make it hard. We take our emo­tional temperature and find ourselves below normal, lacking in resolve. We would do it, we know we could do it, but we decide to wait until the doing of it is more effortless. In other words, we put ourselves in a passive position relative to our art. We want something outside of ourselves, the wind of inspiration, to blow our way and then we will get at it.

  The truth is that getting at it is what makes getting at it easier. Each day that we write creates a habit of writing in us. Each day we go to the barre and do our plies creates an inner as well as outer flexibility that makes dancing easier. It is the easier and
softer way to work today, if only for a few minutes, no matter how hard or impossible it seems. Each inch we inch forward is a tiny little notch in our self-esteem: Yes, I did do it.

  Most of us want not only to do it but to do it well. We want not just to write but to write brilliantly, not just to paint but to paint a masterwork. Our inner perfectionist has standards that we stumble against. Our inner perfectionist takes each stumble

  to reinforce cruelly, "What kind of artist are you, falling short that way?"

  Many very fine artists fall short of their inner perfectionist daily. The trick is "daily." They fall short and then the next day they fall short again. Over time, the accumulated falling-shorts add up to some estimable progress—you would barely know they had fallen short.

  Yesterday I had a visit from a young artist. Quick, bright, tal­ented, and funny, he was in a slough of despond. And why? He was waiting for it to get easier. He had moved from Los Angeles to Taos, telling himself that he would write more in Taos. Now he was in Taos, and he wasn't writing. He felt lazy, angry, disap­pointed in himself. His inner perfectionist was loaded with ammunition about how worthless he was, what a bad artist he was, what a shallow and ineffective person he was. What could he do in the face of this daily inner barrage?

  I suggested that he begin at the beginning with Morning Pages. They can't be done well. They can't be done poorly. They are either done or not done—no matter what the inner perfec­tionist says. "Just start tomorrow," I urged the young artist. "Sim­ply get up and write, 'This is how I feel.'"