Book cover for 'Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir'.
Book cover for 'Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir'.
Image: Supplied

The Artist’s Way is one of the most consistent bestsellers of all time — rather like the books of Paulo Coelho or Kahlil Gibran. These are books that keep getting discovered by new generations, and stack on the sales in millions.

Julia Cameron wrote The Artist’s Way as a set of notes for her writing students. In it she sets out the path of “discovering and recovering” the creative self. It was she who pioneered the notion of “daily pages — the discipline of writing something, anything, first thing in the morning” and the mantra, “Show up to the page.”

Hers has been a restless, chaotic life

The book has influenced countless writers. It’s fascinating, then, to learn that Cameron was a hip Rolling Stone writer in New York in the 1970s who fell in love with a young Martin Scorsese when she interviewed him. They married just as his directing career was taking off and had a daughter. The marriage was doomed, though, as Cameron was, by her own account, a hopeless, fall-down drunk.

When Hunter S Thompson and Andy Warhol tell you that you drink too much, you’ve got a problem. In this autobiography we follow her as she embraces sobriety, writes successfully, and begins to teach. Hers has been a restless, chaotic life with influences of what can be termed California kook. But what a remarkable gift she has left the creative world. (Souvenir Press)

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