Book Review: Blessings by Julia Cameron

If you’re like me and suffer from the winter blahs, then Blessings:  Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life by Julia Cameron may help.

This book slipped into my life unexpectedly. I was scanning the book table at a church fair on Mane Island and its red cover caught my eye. Hmmm, Julia Cameron? Didn’t she write The Artists’ Way? I flipped the book open and sure enough my speculation was correct. Clearly this book deserves further exploration. I turned it over and read the blurb on the back cover…‘contains prayers and declarations that enable those who read them to rejoice with the knowledge that they are part of a larger whole that holds them in a benevolent and protective view. With lessons and observations on the nature of gratitude and the power to change, this book allows us to perceive the secrets of a bountiful existence, one that is intricate, priceless and insightful.’

Sold, I thought and bought the book.

Soon Blessings became part of my bedtime routine.

Each devotional is brief:  begins with a quote from a famous author—from Rumi to Leo Tolstay to Henry David Thoreau to Hildegard of Bingen to…—and concludes with a reflection related to the quote.

Blessings is a small book but it’s powerful. I wake with a seed of postivity firmly planted in my mind.

Do authors journal? by Leanne Dyck

Short answer:  Yes.

Long answer...
James Scott Bell wrote an article for the Writers' Digest website titled 5 Tools For Building Conflict in Your Novel. I found a lot of useful information in this article, such as...

'The best way to use a dream is sparsely (once per novel as a general rule) and then only to give a window into what the character is experiencing, emotionally, at the moment. It is a method to get us inside the character and show us just how the conflict is getting to her.' 

and

'Try working a background secret of some kind into your story with the end goal of heightening the conflict.'

and 

'Just continue to think trouble, trouble, trouble. Make it worse. Turn up the heat. That's conflict, your best friend as a writer.'

and

'I picked up one of the best ongoing writing tools for conflict from Sue Grafton. It's the novel journal. This is a document you keep, almost like a diary, jotting things in it every day before you begin to write.'

Now that last point, the one about the journal, that wasn't new to me. I've been keeping one of those for years. Every since, 2009, when I embarked on the journey of writing my first book-length manuscript. I keep a journal just like Sue Grafton. Well, to be honest, not just like Sue Grafton. Because I keep two. One that I write in before, during and after a major writing project. The other about the major writing project. This one holds bites of narration, dialogue, etc. 

Oh, yes, and I also keep a notebook in my purse so that I can write notes on the fly. And...um...of course I keep this blog--which is on-line journal. So, in some ways, I don't keep a journal--I bath in them. And, well, there's also that journal I keep to record writing advice I find on the internet. And there's...

'Right Brain, my creative part, really isn't interested in working line-by-line. Right Brain sees the whole picture. Left Brain might insist that we start at the beginning and proceed in an orderly fashion right through to the end, but Right Brain has its own way of going about its business. The journal is a place to honor Right Brain's ingenuity and non-conformity.' -writes Sue Grafton in The Completed Handbook of Novel Writing (p. 196)

Do other authors keep journals?

A quick search, using my favourite search engine, revealed...

[T]he habit of writing...for my own eyes only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments...I believe that during the past year I can trace some increase of ease in my professional writing which I attribute to my casual half hour after tea.' -Virginia Woolf

'Keepers of private notebooks are...lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.' -Joan Didion

'In the diary you find proof that in situations which today would seem unbearable, you lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand moved then as it does today, when we may be wiser because we are able to look back upon our former condition, and for that very reason have got to admit the courage of our earlier striving in which we persisted even in sheer ignorance.' Franz Kafka

'The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather--in many cases--offers an alternative to it. -Susan Sontag

In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron offers Morning Papers as a way 'to retrieve your creativity' (p. 9)

And if you're still not convinced that journaling is worthwhile read...

5 Ways a Journal Can Make You More Productive

Let's give Sue Grafton the final word... 'Remember it's your journal and you can do it any way you choose.' -The Completed Handbook of Novel Writing (p. 199)