Julia Cameron’s autobiography, “Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir” was published in 2005. Cameron, born March 4, 1948, is an award-winning poet, playwright, and filmmaker. She has also written many non-fiction titles, is a journalist, novelist, screenplay writer, songwriter and composer, and a strong advocate for and teacher of creativity. She has written thirty books. Among them is “The Artist’s Way”, “The Vein of Gold”, “Walking in this World”, “The Right To Write”, and “The Sound of Paper”. Cameron is most known for The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, c1992, a twelve-week program she created for artists and others to unblock their creativity. She believes in everyone becoming unblocked creatively whether you are an artist, a writer, or a business person. She based her program upon the twelve-step Alcoholics Anonymous programs.“Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir” is a fascinating book that I read quickly. Cameron’s writing is amazingly honest and I love her depictions of her daily life as an artist. They were quite inspiring. She speaks about her first marriage to the famous film director, Martin Scorcese, her struggle with overcoming alcoholism, and in later years, dealing with a mental imbalance which had to be treated with medication, her upper-class upbringing in Libertyville, Illinois, complete with horses, her daughter by Martin Scorcese, Domenica Cameron-Scorcese who is an actress, writer, and director, her second marriage to author Mark Bryan whom she met in Chicago and who collaborated with her on “The Artist’s Way”. She also talks about her writing life, her beloved parents and siblings, the creative artists and metaphysical people she has met in the places she has lived and worked – Los Angeles and Venice Beach, California, Chicago, New York City, London, and Taos, New Mexico, how she went from writing for “The Rolling Stones” Magazine in New York City when she met Scorcese to screenplay writing in Hollywood, to being a film critic in Chicago, etc. She has mastered a number of forms of creative writing and journalism as well as in her later years, successfully working with music. Julia emphasizes that she had always desired to be a writer. This has been her life’s dream. In “Floor Sample” she speaks about the difficulty of being accepted by the “in” people, surviving financially, finding people who believe in you, “hearing” the work, becoming creatively unblocked, and persevering as an artist. She also speaks of the disappointments when she finished her Hollywood screenplays but they were not made into films. She says it felt like they had been “aborted”. A lot of the book also speaks about her work travelling the country with Mark Bryan and other teachers, teaching “The Artist’s Way”. I have known about “The Artist’s Way” since somewhere in the 1990’s when I lived on Maui and took “freewriting classes” from my writing teacher, Lollie Groth. She used freewriting and “The Artist’s Way” to unblock writers. A decade earlier, in my twenties, I had lived in Chicago and been a member of an organization called “Women in Film”. I was lucky enough to hear Cameron speak as part of a panel discussion about filmmaking. At that time, she left an impact on me and I never forgot about her. Little did I know that years later, I would be using the tools of her yet-to-be written book “The Artist’s Way”. Cameron recommends three basic tools for getting creatively unblocked. The first tool is what she has termed “the morning pages” which are three one-sided 8 ½ x 11” pages of straight writing, getting the junk of your life down, and writing whatever comes to mind. The second artist’s way tool is holding a weekly artist’s date with oneself, where you take yourself somewhere that will inspire you. It could be a bookstore, a café, or a boutique. It is a way of honoring yourself as an artist. The last creative tool she talks about is taking walks. Longer walks are better but shorter walks will do. She says that walking unblocks your creativity, giving you ideas. I have heard other writers also speak of that.
Upon reading “Floor Sample”, I decided to look at the books by Cameron that I had not previously looked at. I checked a bunch out at the library. They are excellent - truly well-written. She says that “The Vein of Gold” may be hard to get through but the people that worked through it ended up having good results with it. I also ended up reading a novel she wrote that was published in 2008. It is called “Mozart’s Ghost”. I really enjoyed it. Sometimes people who speak and write about writing are not good at fiction writing. Fortunately, this is not the case with Cameron. I would highly recommend “Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir”, particularly if you are interested in the creative life. It totally left a strong impression on me. I would also recommend “The Artist’s Way” and Cameron’s other books. They literally have the power to change your life.
Review written by Karin Olsen
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