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#[1]alternate [2]Julia Cameron Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages
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[4]Style|Julia Cameron Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/style/julia-cameron-the-artists-way.
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Julia Cameron, making change at 70.
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Julia Cameron, making change at 70.Credit...Ramsay de Give for The New
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York Times
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Julia Cameron Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages
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With “The Artist’s Way,” Julia Cameron invented the way people renovate
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the creative soul.
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Julia Cameron, making change at 70.Credit...Ramsay de Give for The New
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York Times
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[6]Penelope Green
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By [7]Penelope Green
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* Feb. 2, 2019
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SANTA FE, N.M. — On any given day, someone somewhere is likely leading
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an Artist’s Way group, gamely knocking back the exercises of “The
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Artist’s Way” book, the quasi-spiritual manual for “creative recovery,”
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as its author Julia Cameron puts it, that has been a lodestar to
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blocked writers and other artistic hopefuls for more than a quarter of
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a century. There have been Artist’s Way clusters in the Australian
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outback and the Panamanian jungle; in Brazil, Russia, the United
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Kingdom and Japan; and also, as a cursory scan of Artist’s Way Meetups
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reveals, in Des Moines and Toronto. It has been taught in prisons and
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sober communities, at spiritual retreats and New Age centers, from
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Esalen to Sedona, from the Omega Institute to the [8]Open Center, where
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Ms. Cameron will appear in late March, as she does most years.
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Adherents of “The Artist’s Way” include the authors Patricia Cornwell
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and Sarah Ban Breathnach. Pete Townshend, Alicia Keys and Helmut Newton
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have all noted its influence on their work.
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So has Tim Ferriss, the hyperactive productivity guru behind “The Four
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Hour Workweek,” though to save time he didn’t actually read the book,
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“which was recommended to me by many megaselling authors,” [9]he
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writes. He just did the “Morning Pages,” one of the book’s central
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exercises. It requires you write three pages, by hand, first thing in
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the morning, about whatever comes to mind. (Fortunes would seem to have
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been made on the journals printed to support this effort.) The book’s
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other main dictum is the “Artist’s Date” — two hours of alone time each
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week to be spent at a gallery, say, or any place where a new experience
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might be possible.
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Elizabeth Gilbert, who has “done” the book three times, said there
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would be no “Eat, Pray, Love,” without “The Artist’s Way.” Without it,
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there might be no [10]adult coloring books, no [11]journaling fever.
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“Creativity” would not have its own publishing niche or have become a
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ubiquitous buzzword — the “fat-free” of the self-help world — and
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business pundits would not deploy it as a specious organizing
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principle.
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Image
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The book’s enduring success — over 4 million copies have been sold
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since its publication in 1992 — have made its author, a shy
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Midwesterner who had a bit of early fame in the 1970s for practicing
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lively New Journalism at the Washington Post and Rolling Stone, among
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other publications, and for being married, briefly, to Martin Scorsese,
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with whom she has a daughter, Domenica — an unlikely celebrity. With
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its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists
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and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80,
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for example — “The Artist’s Way” proposes an egalitarian view of
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creativity: Everyone’s got it.
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The book promises to free up that inner artist in 12 weeks. It’s a
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template that would seem to reflect the practices of 12-step programs,
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particularly its invocations to a higher power. But according to Ms.
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Cameron, who has been sober since she was 29, “12 weeks is how long it
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takes for people to cook.”
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Now 70, she lives in a spare adobe house in Santa Fe, overlooking an
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acre of scrub and the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. She moved a few
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years ago from Manhattan, following an exercise from her book to list
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25 things you love. As she recalled, “I wrote juniper, sage brush,
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chili, mountains and sky and I said, ‘This is not the Chrysler
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Building.’” On a recent snowy afternoon, Ms. Cameron, who has enormous
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blue eyes and a nimbus of blonde hair, admitted to the jitters before
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this interview. “I asked three friends to pray for me,” she said. “I
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also wrote a note to myself to be funny.”
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In the early 1970s, Ms. Cameron, who is the second oldest of seven
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children and grew up just north of Chicago, was making $67 a week
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working in the mail room of the Washington Post. At the same time, she
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was writing deft lifestyle pieces for the paper — like an East Coast
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Eve Babitz. “With a byline, no one knows you’re just a gofer,” she
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said.
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In her reporting, Ms. Cameron observed an epidemic of green nail polish
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and other “Cabaret”-inspired behaviors in Beltway bars, and slyly
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reviewed a new party drug, methaqualone. She was also, by her own
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admission, a blackout drunk. “I thought drinking was something you did
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and your friends told you about it later,” she said. “In retrospect, in
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cozy retrospect, I was in trouble from my first drink.”
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She met Mr. Scorsese on assignment for Oui magazine and fell hard for
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him. She did a bit of script-doctoring on “Taxi Driver,” and followed
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the director to Los Angeles. “I got pregnant on our wedding night,” she
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said. “Like a good Catholic girl.” When Mr. Scorsese took up with Liza
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Minnelli while all three were working on “New York, New York,” the
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marriage was done. (She recently made a painting depicting herself as a
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white horse and Mr. Scorsese as a lily. “I wanted to make a picture
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about me and Marty,” she said. “He was magical-seeming to me and when I
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look at it I think, ‘Oh, she’s fascinated, but she doesn’t
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understand.’”)
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Image Under the pines.
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Under the pines.Credit...Ramsay de Give for The New York Times
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In her memoir, “Floor Sample,” published in 2006, Ms. Cameron recounts
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the brutality of Hollywood, of her life there as a screenwriter and a
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drunk. Pauline Kael, she writes, described her as a “pornographic
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Victorian valentine, like a young Angela Lansbury.” Don’t marry her for
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tax reasons, Ms. Kael warns Mr. Scorsese. Andy Warhol, who escorts her
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to the premiere of “New York, New York,” inscribes her into his diary
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as a “lush.” A cocaine dealer soothes her — “You have a tiny little
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wife’s habit” — and a doctor shoos her away from his hospital when she
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asks for help, telling her she’s no alcoholic, just a “sensitive young
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woman.” She goes into labor in full makeup and a Chinese dressing gown,
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vowing to be “no trouble.”
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“I think it’s fair to say that drinking and drugs stopped looking like
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a path to success,” she said. “So I luckily stopped. I had a couple of
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sober friends and they said, ‘Try and let the higher power write
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through you.’ And I said, What if he doesn’t want to?’ They said, ‘Just
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try it.’”
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So she did. She wrote novels and screenplays. She wrote poems and
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musicals. She wasn’t always well-reviewed, but she took the knocks with
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typical grit, and she schooled others to do so as well. “I have
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unblocked poets, lawyers and painters,” she said. She taught her tools
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in living rooms and classrooms — “if someone was dumb enough to lend us
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one,” she said — and back in New York, at the Feminist Art Institute.
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Over the years, she refined her tools, typed them up, and sold Xeroxed
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copies in local bookstores for $20. It was her second husband, Mark
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Bryan, a writer, who needled her into making the pages into a proper
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book.
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The first printing was about 9,000 copies, said Joel Fotinos, formerly
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the publisher at Tarcher/Penguin, which published the book in 1992.
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There was concern that it wouldn’t sell. “Part of the reason,” Mr.
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Fotinos said, “was that this was a book that wasn’t like anything else.
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We didn’t know where to put it on the shelves — did it go in religion
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or self-help? Eventually there was a category called ‘creativity,’ and
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‘The Artist’s Way’ launched it.” Now an editorial director at St.
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Martin’s Press, Mr. Fotinos said he is deluged with pitches from
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authors claiming they’ve written “the new Artist’s Way.”
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“But for Julia, creativity was a tool for survival,” he said. “It was
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literally her medicine and that’s why the book is so authentic, and
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resonates with so many people.”
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“I am my tool kits,” Ms. Cameron said.
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And, indeed, “The Artist’s Way” is stuffed with tools: worksheets to be
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filled with thoughts about money, childhood games, old hurts; wish
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lists and exercises, many of which seem exhaustive and exhausting —
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“Write down any resistance, angers and fears,” e.g. — and others that
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are more practical: “Take a 20 minutes walk,” “Mend any mending” and
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“repot any pinched and languishing plants.” It anticipates the work of
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the indefatigable [12]Gretchen Rubin, the happiness maven, if Ms. Rubin
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were a bit kinder but less Type-A.
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“When I teach, it’s like watching the lights come on,” said Ms.
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Cameron. “My students don’t get lectured to. I think they feel safe.
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Rather than try and fix themselves, they learn to accept themselves. I
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think my work makes people autonomous. I feel like people fall in love
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with themselves.”
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Anne Lamott, the inspirational writer and novelist, said that when she
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was teaching writing full-time, her own students swore by “The Artist’s
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Way.” “That exercise — three pages of automatic writing — was a
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sacrament for people,” Ms. Lamott wrote in a recent email. “They could
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plug into something bigger than the rat exercise wheel of self-loathing
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and grandiosity that every writer experiences: ‘This could very easily
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end up being an Oprah Book,’ or ‘Who do I think I’m fooling? I’m a
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subhuman blowhard.’”
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“She’s given you an assignment that is doable, and I think it’s kind of
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a cognitive centering device. Like scribbly meditation,” Ms. Lamott
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wrote. “It’s sort of like how manicurists put smooth pebbles in the
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warm soaking water, so your fingers have something to do, and you don’t
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climb the walls.”
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Image
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In the wild.Credit...Ramsay de Give for The New York Times
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Ms. Cameron continues to write her Morning Pages every day, even though
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she continues, as she said, to be grouchy upon awakening. She eats
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oatmeal at a local cafe and walks Lily, an eager white Westie. She
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reads no newspapers, or social media (perhaps the most grueling tenet
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of “The Artist’s Way” is a week of “reading deprivation”), though an
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assistant runs a Twitter and Instagram account on her behalf. She
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writes for hours, mostly musicals, collaborating with her daughter, a
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film director, and others.
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Ms. Cameron may be a veteran of the modern self-care movement but her
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life has not been all moonbeams and rainbows, and it shows. She was
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candid in conversation, if not quite at ease. “So I haven’t proven
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myself to be hilarious,” she said with a flash of dry humor, adding
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that even after so many years, she still gets stage-fright before
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beginning a workshop.
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She has written about her own internal critic, imagining a gay British
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interior designer she calls Nigel. “And nothing is ever good enough for
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Nigel,” she said. But she soldiers on.
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She will tell you that she has good boundaries. But like many
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successful women, she brushes off her achievements, attributing her
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unlooked-for wins to luck.
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“If you have to learn how to do a movie, you might learn from Martin
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Scorsese. If you have to learn about entrepreneurship, you might learn
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from Mark” — her second husband. “So I’m very lucky,” she said. “If I
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have a hard time blowing my own horn, I’ve been attracted to people who
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blew it for me.”
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