- For the British photographer, see Julia Margaret Cameron.
Julia B. Cameron (born March 4, 1948 in Illinois) is an American teacher, author, artist, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist. She is perhaps most famous for her book
The Artist's Way (1992). She also has written many other non-fiction works, short stories, and essays as well as novels, plays, musicals, and screenplays.
"Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting something down.""Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.""Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself.""I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.""Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything.""Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.""Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.""Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again.""The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.""What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us."
Julia Cameron was born and raised in a Chicago suburb, and grew up Catholic. She started college at Georgetown University, then transferred to Fordham. She started her journalism career at the Washington Post, then moved on to Rolling Stone.
She met Martin Scorsese when interviewing him for Rolling Stone. They married in 1975 and divorced in 1977; Cameron was Scorsese's second wife. They have one daughter, Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, born in 1976. Cameron and Scorsese collaborated on three films. Cameron's film, God's Will, is based on the Cameron-Scorsese marriage and divorce, portraying a divorced, self-centered show business couple who die unexpectedly and end up fighting in heaven over what will happen to their daughter.
A review of Cameron's memoir Floor Sample states that Cameron "reveals the dark side of her privileged life: her descent into alcoholic blackouts and drug-induced paranoia as well as descriptions of her bouts with psychosis." In 1978, reaching a point in her life when writing and drinking could no longer coexist, Cameron stopped the drugs and alcohol, and began teaching creative unblocking, which propelled her to fame after she published the book based on her teachings, The Artist's Way. She states creativity is an authentic spiritual path.
Cameron has taught filmmaking, creative unblocking, and writing. She has taught at The Smithsonian, Esalen, the Omega Institute, and the New York Open Center. At Northwestern University, she was writer in residence for film. In 2008 she taught a class at the New York Open Center, "The Right to Write," named and modeled after one of her bestselling books, which reveals the importance of writing.
Cameron has lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, Taos, and Washington D.C.,