Julia Cameron: It’s Never Too Late To Begin Again

Interview by Miriam Knight

Exclusive Interview with Julia Cameron: It’s Never Too Late To Begin Again

Julia Cameron has had a remarkable career, which in turn has given remarkable help to others. Herself an award-winning poet, playwright, and filmmaker, she has written thirty books, ranging from her widely-praised, hard-hitting crime novel The Dark Room to her volumes of children’s poems and prayers.

Despite her extensive film and theater credits, which include such diverse work as Miami Vice and the prize-winning romantic comedy God’s Will, which she both wrote and directed, Cameron is best known for her hugely successful works on creativity.

The Artist’s Way has sold more than four million copies worldwide, and her follow-up bestsellers Finding Water, The Vein of Gold, Walking in this World and The Right to Write are likewise flagship books which are taught in universities, churches, human potential centers and even in tiny clusters deep in the jungles of Panama.

Credited with founding a new human potential movement that has enabled millions to realize their creative dreams, Cameron eschews the title creativity expert, preferring instead to describe herself simply as an artist. “Artists have always mentored; I just do it on a wider scale.”

OMTimes is proud to share this interview with Julia Cameron and Miriam Knight.

Miriam Knight: Julia Cameron is an award-winning writer, best-selling author, artist, and one of the most beloved teachers in the world of how to live a creative life. She has written more than 30 books, including her perennial best-seller on the creative process, The Artist’s Way. Today we will explore her latest book; It’s Never Too Late To Begin Again, Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond.

Julia Cameron: Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Miriam Knight: Well I, for one, thank you for this book. The title alone is inspiring, and although I’m probably never going to retire, some 10,000 people a day do retire in this country. I think finding meaning in one’s life is challenging at any time, so tell me why you think that reconnecting with one’s creativity is the answer to a good retirement.

Julia Cameron: Well, I think that when people retire, they are often at wit’s end about what to do next. They may have had a dream of, “When I retire I will try X.” But then, when they get to retirement, they find themselves stymied and unable to 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.