503 - Unblock Your Creative Process: What to Write About When You Have NO Ideas

0:00Marie Forleo:You've got four core tools for creative recovery. And I kind of want to go deep on two of them, morning pages and asking for guidance. So let's start with morning pages. For those that don't know, what is that tool and how would they begin to use it? Well, morning pages are three pages of longhand morning writing that you do first thing on awakening. and you write them on eight and a half by 11 paper and you write, this is what I like. This is what I don't like. This is what I want more of. This is what I want less of. And it's as if you're sending a little telegram to the universe and you're saying, here is my precise position.

0:56here is how I authentically actually feel. So it's a form of prayer and meditation. And you don't show them to anybody. They're top secret. And they are done longhand rather than on a computer because what happens when we write longhand is that we go deep. And what happens when we write on the computer is that we may go whizzing past something important. So morning pages are a tool of expansion. You start to write them and are given a dare. And the pages say, you might want to try X. and you find yourself thinking, I can't. That's too threatening. I don't believe I can do that. And the pages are stubborn, and they say you will do that.

2:10In my case, it was writing music. I was 45 years old. I was raised as the non-musical one in a very musical family. And the pages kept saying, you will be writing radiant songs. And I kept thinking, not bloody likely.

2:35But what happened was they were persistent. And I found myself going to visit a girlfriend and complaining bitterly to her. I've been praying for what to do next. And I'm told I'm going to be writing music. radiance songs. And I don't think it's possible. I think if I were the least big musical, I would know it. And she said, she lived up in the Rocky Mountains. She said, why don't you go sit down by the stream? And she pointed me down the slope to where a little Rocky Mountain stream went running through her property. And I went down to the stream and I sat down on a boulder and I was sort of half-assed meditating.

3:35And all of a sudden I heard, my green heart is filled with apples. Your dark face is filled with stars I am the one that you've forgotten You are the one my heart desires So dance when you think of me Sing to remember me Sing till your heart can see who we are Dance when you think of me Sing to remember me Sing till your heart can see Who we are And I thought, I think it's a song Oh my God It is And I went racing back up the hill And she said, here Sing it into this little tape recorder And I sang it into the little tape recorder and what happened after that was that I had 60 pieces of music come through me.

4:50And so now if you go to my website, juliacameronlive.com, you can say there's a section that's called Julia's Art and there's a section in that on music and it has three musicals that I've written and many flower songs that are just sort of delightful little ditties. Yes, I've listened to some. They are magical. So I feel like Morning Pages dared me to become larger and I eventually took up the dare. so that's morning pages and at the end of in the artist's way I talk about asking for guidance and could I have guidance about X and then I listen and so people will say to me Julia you've written 40 books why are you now suddenly talking about guidance and I realized that I'd been using guidance for 30 years myself and I used it so frequently that it was invisible to me.

6:19And then I realized, well, I need to make it visible and accountable for my students. So I asked them to inquire, what should I write next? What should I do next? And listen for guidance. And they were often saying, well, Julia, what if it's just my imagination when I hear something back? And I say, well, if it is your imagination, your imagination is much more powerful and benevolent than you had previously thought. So more power to it. Yes.

7:13Marie Forleo:I got to tell you, just quickly, I practiced asking for guidance this morning at the end of my morning pages. It was the first time that I did it in the fashion that you lay out for us, which is, you know, you had given the example that you will write LJ for little Julia. So I wrote LM for little Marie. And I asked probably five or six questions this morning when I did my morning pages at the end. And I will tell you, the answers were simple and straightforward. They felt wise. and truthful. And it was fantastic. So I think I want everybody to experiment with asking for guidance. And I have been told it doesn't have to be difficult.

8:10The answers are simple, straightforward, loving, encouraging. Yes. And that sounds like that's your experience.

8:20Marie Forleo:Oh, I've experimented with a form of guided writing, doing a bit of a meditation, asking a question, and then almost doing stream of consciousness. But what I love about your method of asking for wisdom, it's like a Q &A. It is so conversational and so direct and so right there. What should I do about, I'm working on a new writing project. I was asking about a piece of real estate. Then I was asking about, you know, I went all over to the different nooks and crannies of my life from the big stuff to the tiny stuff and it flowed. So I just want to give that texture so that anyone listening, if they think like, oh my goodness, Julia Cameron hears guidance, but I don't know if anyone else could.

9:09Marie Forleo:I just want to give that further encouragement of how profound and fun and simple and easy it was. And I wanted to thank you for that because it's brilliant. You're very welcome. Hey, it's Marie. If you're working your tail off and your revenue still isn't moving, listen up. Revenue on Repeat is six AI tools built on my$100 million frameworks. They nail your voice, sharpen your offer, and write your copy for you. One payment, instant access. Get started at marieforleo.com slash shop. So I would love to talk, if you're open to it, about the productivity of creativity. And this is just me being curious because as a writer myself who loves your work so much, Do you outline your new books before you start writing?

10:09Marie Forleo:Do you work from a table of contents or are you in such a flow now, Julia, after so many decades that you just sit down and you're just like, I'm going to write and it'll be complete when it's complete? Well, that's a good description of how I do it. Yeah. I do not write from an outline. I do not write from a table of contents. I sit down and I ask, what next? and then I listen. And the pages seem to come one right after another. The words come one right after another. And I believe that all of us can have this experience and that what happens with morning pages is that it trains you to stand to one side and let a flow move through you.

11:12So I think we should say that when we do morning pages, we may encounter our critic who says, you're boring, this has been done before, what are you doing? and what we learn to say to our critic is, thank you for sharing. And then we keep right on writing morning pages. And this is a portable skill. So when we sit down to do our, quote, serious writing and the critic shows up, we say, oh, thank you for sharing. And it goes from being a large, overbearing ogre to being a wee peeping cartoon character.

12:05Marie Forleo:So staying on process just for a few more minutes. I read somewhere when I was doing my research to talk with you that when you're doing a first draft of your next book, that you actually aim for about three pages a day, which will get you about 90 pages a month. Is that, again, just in that flow of like, you'll write for about three pages? Have you ever been the type of writer who feels like you want to stretch or say, oh, I'm supposed to reach a certain word count or working on deadlines? Or again, is it just a different kind of experience for you? I think it's a different kind of experience for me.

12:47I write my morning pages, three pages of morning writing. And then later on in the day, I sit down to write on my, quote, real project. And one more time, I find that three pages is a manageable amount. And I don't try to do more than three pages because I don't want to strip my gears. And this brings us to a second tool called an artist's date. So every day you write your morning pages. That's a daily practice that you do despite resistance. And when I'm teaching and I say, I have a tool for you. it's a nightmare you'll have to get up 45 minutes early and work people will say work oh i get it i'm going to work on my creativity so they're quite willing to do the work of morning pages but then i say now once a week i want you to go out by yourself do something incredibly interesting, friendly, frivolous, fun.

14:10It's sort of an assigned play. And what happens when I start to talk about do an artist's date, take your creative consciousness out for a little expedition, people say, oh, I don't see what play has to do with working on our creativity. And they cross their arms and they tilt their heads and they get very skeptical. And I say to them then, well, we have an expression, the play of ideas. And we don't realize that it's actually a prescription. Play. And you'll get ideas. and I think what happens when we're working on a project is that we start fishing from an inner well and what happens is that we hook images, we hook ideas, we hook concepts and what happens then is sometimes people will say, Julia, I was doing so well and then it dried up.

15:43I say, well, it dried up because you overfished your inner well. you hooked too many ideas without replenishing the flow of images so artist dates replenish the inner well if you're working flat out I sometimes say try to take two artist dates in a week but that's usually not necessary Usually people can get by taking one art estate a week. My favorite art estate is going to a pet store where they have a big giant bunny named George. And I go to the pet store and I ask the owner, can I pet George? And he says, well, that's up to George. but I have found that George likes to be petted and it gives me a sense of whimsy expansion delight sensuality and I find that an artist state that has all those factors in it refills my inner well

17:16Marie Forleo:Okay, so we've covered three of our core tools, morning pages, artist date, and asking for guidance. Shall we talk about the final tool of the four? Well, I think we're talking now about walking. Yes. Yes. And I think walking is something that is so simple that we tend to overlook it. And what I have found is that if you go out a couple times a week for 20 minutes at a crack and walk by yourself, you wake up to a sense of benevolence. I've had people say to me Julia I think I felt God and they're sort of marveling at the connection that they feel when they walk so we recently lost a wonderful Buddhist teacher named Thich Nhat Hanh and he is a was a great believer in walking.

18:36And he said, try and walk as if with each footfall, you're kissing the earth.

18:47Marie Forleo:So beautiful. I was just in Costa Rica a few weeks ago, and I thought of you because I had my last morning there before I was jumping on a plane back to New York and I got up early. I did my morning pages and then I went for about a 30 minute walk into the forest and into the jungle without my phone, without anything. And it was so incredibly healing and it made me think I need to do more of this. I need to do more of this, you know, in my, in where I live and wherever I am. And I think, and please correct me if I'm wrong, when we go walking for this purpose, leave your phones. Don't listen to anything.

19:36Marie Forleo:Don't bring anyone else. It's not for pets. It's not for companions. It's for you and the creative force. Is that right? That's exactly right. Yeah. And sometimes people will say, oh, but I'd like to listen to music. and then I say well then you're listening to the composers walk yes yes or they say I want to take my dog and I say well if you take your dog your dog is going to start saying things like oh look at that handsome Rottweiler oh look at that adorable cocker spaniel and you find yourself taking your dog's walk. So it's something that's done solo, just you and your creative consciousness.

20:36Marie Forleo:Let's talk about the power of making lists. I know one motivated your cross-country move. I think you lived in New York for many, many years and then you moved to Santa Fe. And I believe it was following an exercise from one of your books about listing just 25 things that you love. Do you want to talk about the power that sometimes lists can have in unearthing our next moves or something that we may want to go explore? Well, I think they're very powerful. And I think for me, I had been living in New York and it's an artist's way exercise of listing 25 things you loved. And I started listing, and I listed, well, I love mountains.

21:32Well, I love golden chemisa bushes. Well, I love green chili. Well, I love black beans. And I'm looking at this list, and I'm going, nowhere on here does it say the Empire State Building. I found my list was that I was living in New York, but my heart was in the Southwest. So that became the impulse that moved me to Santa Fe.

22:11Marie Forleo:If anyone listening or watching right now feels like they just don't have any idea of what they could write about. They feel completely like a blank slate. What would be something that you could suggest for someone to get their creative juices flowing? And we know we've got the tools under our belt, but is there anything that you would say to someone who's just like, I have no idea what to write about right now? Well, I think what you're asking me for is, is there a secret final tool? And the answer is there is no secret tool. The tools are the tools that are explained at great length. And morning pages will give people a clue as to what to write about.

23:09Yes. And another thing, I would say the power of the list, write 25 things you love and then look down the list and see if something sort of gently beeps at you. I believe in coaxing ourselves forward, not in flogging ourselves forward. So if we coax ourselves forward, we may find ourselves saying, oh, I'm living amid skyscrapers, but I'm missing mountains.

23:55Marie Forleo:Yes. Julia, this is just such a powerful conversation. I am so grateful for your continued contribution. is there anything that you want to leave people with as we wrap up today on the power of creativity, consistency, continuing to show up for yourself? Anything that you want to share? Well, I think the power of creativity is the power of consistency, is showing up for yourself. So I would gently say to people, please, I'd like you to try morning pages, and I'd like you to go on an artist's date. I'd like you to take a walk, and I'd like you to ask for guidance about what it is you should do next, and then listen.

24:59so I think a great deal of what I'm talking about is the power of prayer where we say, dear God, please guide me and the power of listening for the guidance that we hear I think we are led I believe that