What I learnt from Liz Gilbert and Julia Cameron
I was recently watching a How To Academy webinar with Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way) and Liz Gilbert (best known for Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic).
During the conversation, Liz recounted a story of some of the research she did for Big Magic.
When I was beginning to write Big Magic, I put a survey on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of people. I asked the question: What is the number one obstacle to you living a more creative life? And 95% of the answers were the same: “I don’t have time…”
She went on to talk about the absurdity of this. “At that moment, they were staring at their phone! Part of the discipline [of creativity] is getting honest about where your time is actually going”.
And most of us have our devices ping up weekly with a reminder of how much time we spend on them and find it easy to find time to watch TV and films!
Although it may not surprise you that time is the biggest barrier to writing a book, it may also be disguised as something else. As Liz and Julia discussed in the interview, ‘lack of time’ may be an excuse for fear…
And they are certainly not immune. They talked about their own imposter syndrome and whether they thought they were good enough, despite having published scores of books between them. And I know what it feels like, as I’ve been through it myself, especially when I was writing my first book.
So, is it about time you wrote your book?
Do you need to get off your phone or TV, or perhaps set some boundaries around writing?
Or is fear getting in your way?
I wrote a blog post last year about the top 7 excuses and fears that often come up when writing a book and what to do about it, which I thought you’d find useful.
There are some great How To Academy interviews coming up. You can find out more here.