The Creative Life: True Tales of Inspiration

by Julia Cameron, Marisa Vitali (Read by)

Overview

A passionate and inspiring guide to creating a life built around the creative process. This groundbreaking new work from the best-selling author of The Artist's Way, guides listeners in creating a vision for their lives in which art and life are inextricably linked. According to Julia Cameron, when we allow our creative spirit to serve as our compass, we discover that the art we have always longed to create is suddenly within our grasp. In The Creative Life, Cameron shows listeners how to use their creative hearts and minds to cultivate lives that nourish and sustain their art. Through beautifully drawn scenes from her own life, as well as the lives of the many artists around her, Cameron reveals that creativity flourishes during the quiet pauses in our lives - and that it is only when we allow ourselves to slow down and savor life that we discover ways to depict it sensitively and poetically in our art. By opening the curtain on her own life and the lives of the artists who surround her, Cameron reveals a world rich with creative possibility.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536646818
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	02/21/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Julia Cameron has been an active artist for more than thirty years, with fifteen books (including bestsellers The Artist's Way and The Right to Write) and countless television, film, and theater scripts to her credit. Writing since the age of 18, Cameron has a long list of screenplay and teleplay credits to her name, including an episode of Miami Vice which featured Miles Davis, and Elvis and the Beauty Queen, which starred Don Johnson. She was a writer on such movies as Taxi Driver, New York, New York, and The Last Waltz. She wrote, produced, and directed the award-winning independent feature film, God's Will, which premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival, and was selected by the London Film Festival, the Munich International Film Festival, and Women in Film Festival, among others. In addition to making film, Cameron has taught film at such diverse places as Chicago Filmmakers, Northwestern University, and Columbia College.

She is an award-winning playwright, whose work has appeared on such well-known stages as the McCarter Theater at Princeton University and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

From the popular workshops on unlocking creativity and living from the creative center she has taught for two decades, came her book, The Artist's Way (Tarcher/Putnam), which has become an international bestseller, published in a dozen languages with worldwide sales of over one million copies. In the United States, The Artist's Way has appeared on many bestseller lists, including Publishers Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Denver Post, and many others.

She has taught The Artist's Way workshops to such places as The Smithsonian, The New York Times, Omega Institute, Esalen, The Open Center, Interface, Wisdom House, and many others. As a result of her workshops and book, The Artist's Way, creativity groups have formed across America, and throughout the world, from the jungles of Panama to the Outback of Australia.

Her work on the artist's soul includes The Right to Write (Tarcher/Putnam), which was published in January 1999, and appeared on such bestseller lists as The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, and The Denver Post. Other works include The Vein of Gold (Tarcher/Putnam), an amazing book of tools expressly for the healing and rehabilitation of the artist's soul in us all. This fall, Tarcher/Putnam will publish three new humor/spirituality titles, God Is No Laughing Matter, Supplies, and Dog is God Spelled Backwards.

Cameron has had an accomplished, distinguished, and extensive journalism career, and her credits include writing on the arts for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. At age 23, Cameron was already writing features and book criticism for The Washington Post and later covered arts as a special correspondent for The Chicago Tribune.

She wrote for Rolling Stone and New York magazines during their most influential years, and was cited in Time magazine for her Watergate coverage in Rolling Stone. Hand-picked by legendary editor Jim Bellows, she wrote an OpEd column for Vogue magazine. Cameron has been a frequent columnist and contributor for American Film magazine for more than a decade. Her newspaper and magazine articles, essays and reviews on the arts number well into the hundreds. She won the prestigious Maggie Award for Best Editorial Writing for a story in American Film magazine on the danger of the intersection of sex and violence in movies.

She is a published poet, novelist and essayist. Her essays have been collected in several anthologies, including The Rolling Stone Reader and The Dark Room (Carroll and Graf), a novel about violence and child abuse. This fall, Cameron will also release Popcorn: Hollywood Stories (Really Great Books), inspired by her days in The Business.

In addition to writing words, Cameron writes music. She has taught at the National Songwriter's Association in Nashville. After being a lyricist for others for several decades, Cameron recently began writing her own compositions. A main focus for her in the last three years has been music and sound healing, including writing Avalon, a musical based on the Arthurian legend and set in modern times.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron is not exclusively about writing—it is about discovering and developing the artist within whether a painter, poet, screenwriter or musician—but it is a lot about writing. If you have always wanted to pursue a creative dream, have always wanted to play and create with words or paints, this book will gently get you started and help you learn all kinds of paying-attention techniques; and that, after all, is what being an artist is all about. It’s about learning to pay attention.”
—Anne Lamott, Mademoiselle
 
“The premise of the book is that creativity and spirituality are the same thing, they come from the same place. And we were created to use this life to express our individuality, and that over the course of a lifetime that gets beaten out of us. [THE ARTIST’S WAY] helped me put aside my fear and not worry about whether the record would be commercial.”
—Grammy award-winning singer Kathy Mattea
 
“Julia Cameron brings creativity and spirituality together with the same kind of step-by-step wisdom that Edgar Cayce encouraged. The result is spiritual creativity as a consistent and nourishing part of daily life.”
—Venture Inward
 
“I never knew I was a visual artist until I read Julia Cameron’s THE ARTIST’S WAY.”
—Jannene Behl in Artist’s Magazine
 
“Julia Cameron’s landmark book THE ARTIST’S WAY helped me figure out who I really was as an adult, not so much as an artist but as a person. And award-winning journalist and poet, Cameron’s genius is that she doesn’t tell readers what they should do to achieve or who they should be—instead she creates a map for readers to start exploring these questions themselves.”
—Michael F. Melcher, Law Practice magazine
 
“This is not a self-help book in the normative sense. It is simply a powerful book that can challenge one to move into an entirely different state of personal expression and growth.”
—Nick Maddox, Deland Beacon
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY (with its companion volume THE ARTIST’S WAY MORNING PAGES JOURNAL) becomes a friend over time, not just a journal. Like a journal, it provokes spontaneous insights and solutions; beyond journaling, it establishes a process that is interactive and dynamic.”
—Theresa L. Crenshaw, M.D., San Diego Union-Tribune
 
 “If you really want to supercharge your writing, I recommend that you get a copy of Julia Cameron’s book THE ARTIST’S WAY. I’m not a big fan of self-help books, but this book has changed my life for the better and restored my previously lagging creativity.”
—Jeffrey Bairstow, Laser Focus World
 
“Working with the principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Cameron developed a three month program to recover creativity. THE ARTIST’S WAY shows how to tap into the higher power that connects human creativity and the creative energies of the universe.”
—Mike Gossie, Scottsdale Tribune
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY is the seminal book on the subject of creativity and an invaluable guide to living the artistic life. Still as vital today—or perhaps even more so—than it was when it was first published in 1992, it is a provocative and inspiring work. Updated and expanded, it reframes THE ARTIST’S WAY for a new century.”
—Branches of Light
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY has sold over 3 million copies since its publication in 1992. Cameron still teaches it because there is sustained demand for its thoughtful, spiritual approach to unblocking and nurturing creativity. It is, dare we say, timeless.”
—Nancy Colasurdo, FOXBusiness
 
 
 
Praise for VEIN OF GOLD, the second volume in the ARTIST’S WAY trilogy
 
“For those seeking the wellspring of creativity, this book, like its predecessor, is a solid gold diving rod.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Editorial Reviews

In her life, Cameron has learned to seize whatever moments of creative time she can get. "Small tidbits add up to a larger whole," she says, one of the compact yet insightful truisms that make up this volume of enlightening analogies, confessions, and vignettes of Cameron's life on New York's Upper West Side. From dinners and musicals to teaching engagements and writing sessions, Cameron's latest contribution to her already extensive list of titles is something of a diary, exposing her personal life with unexpected honesty and humility. A spat with her inner censor, a made up "gay British designer" she's named Nigel, gives the book a light-hearted and relatable tone. Colorful characters, including actors turned writers, musicians turned songwriters, poets turned playwrights, and songwriter-bakers, make up an encouraging community of creators. Practical, productive, and passionate, Cameron and her Believing Mirrors ("people who see our power and potential and reflect it back at us") show the artistic way in an organic light that makes it seem approachable and attainable, revealing how living creatively can be as calibrated as a work of fiction.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

THE ARTIST’S WAY by Julia Cameron is not exclusively about writing—it is about discovering and developing the artist within whether a painter, poet, screenwriter or musician—but it is a lot about writing. If you have always wanted to pursue a creative dream, have always wanted to play and create with words or paints, this book will gently get you started and help you learn all kinds of paying-attention techniques; and that, after all, is what being an artist is all about. It’s about learning to pay attention.”
—Anne Lamott, Mademoiselle
 
“The premise of the book is that creativity and spirituality are the same thing, they come from the same place. And we were created to use this life to express our individuality, and that over the course of a lifetime that gets beaten out of us. [THE ARTIST’S WAY] helped me put aside my fear and not worry about whether the record would be commercial.”
—Grammy award-winning singer Kathy Mattea
 
“Julia Cameron brings creativity and spirituality together with the same kind of step-by-step wisdom that Edgar Cayce encouraged. The result is spiritual creativity as a consistent and nourishing part of daily life.”
—Venture Inward
 
“I never knew I was a visual artist until I read Julia Cameron’s THE ARTIST’S WAY.”
—Jannene Behl in Artist’s Magazine
 
“Julia Cameron’s landmark book THE ARTIST’S WAY helped me figure out who I really was as an adult, not so much as an artist but as a person. And award-winning journalist and poet, Cameron’s genius is that she doesn’t tell readers what they should do to achieve or who they should be—instead she creates a map for readers to start exploring these questions themselves.”
—Michael F. Melcher, Law Practice magazine
 
“This is not a self-help book in the normative sense. It is simply a powerful book that can challenge one to move into an entirely different state of personal expression and growth.”
—Nick Maddox, Deland Beacon
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY (with its companion volume THE ARTIST’S WAY MORNING PAGES JOURNAL) becomes a friend over time, not just a journal. Like a journal, it provokes spontaneous insights and solutions; beyond journaling, it establishes a process that is interactive and dynamic.”
—Theresa L. Crenshaw, M.D., San Diego Union-Tribune
 
 “If you really want to supercharge your writing, I recommend that you get a copy of Julia Cameron’s book THE ARTIST’S WAY. I’m not a big fan of self-help books, but this book has changed my life for the better and restored my previously lagging creativity.”
—Jeffrey Bairstow, Laser Focus World
 
“Working with the principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Cameron developed a three month program to recover creativity. THE ARTIST’S WAY shows how to tap into the higher power that connects human creativity and the creative energies of the universe.”
—Mike Gossie, Scottsdale Tribune
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY is the seminal book on the subject of creativity and an invaluable guide to living the artistic life. Still as vital today—or perhaps even more so—than it was when it was first published in 1992, it is a provocative and inspiring work. Updated and expanded, it reframes THE ARTIST’S WAY for a new century.”
—Branches of Light
 
“THE ARTIST’S WAY has sold over 3 million copies since its publication in 1992. Cameron still teaches it because there is sustained demand for its thoughtful, spiritual approach to unblocking and nurturing creativity. It is, dare we say, timeless.”
—Nancy Colasurdo, FOXBusiness
 
 
 
Praise for VEIN OF GOLD, the second volume in the ARTIST’S WAY trilogy
 
“For those seeking the wellspring of creativity, this book, like its predecessor, is a solid gold diving rod.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

From the Publisher

Writing in short, easily digestible chapters, Cameron (The Sound of Paper: Starting from Scratch) encourages readers to weave their inner creativity into their everyday lives. She demonstrates, through diary-like vignettes, how the most everyday activity—e.g., walking dogs—can be seen as an artistic pursuit. The beauty of this book is that Cameron details the ordinariness of it all. One does not live on a roller-coaster ride of creative excitement. Yet one can still live the artistic life and offer good things to the world. Cameron's guide would be of particular help to new artists or those who fear they don't have the "magic" art requires.

Library Journal