By now, our regular readers have heard us talk about The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.  If this is your first time, Dear Reader, hello, and welcome.  I’m A. Catherine Noon, one of your hosts here at the Writer’s Retreat, and I thought I’d kick off the A-Z Blog Challenge by talking about one of my favorite tools.

I first encountered The Artist’s Way in 1995 while living on a sabbatical in Mount Shasta, California.  I had left my urban, corporate life behind in search of becoming a writer.  A client for whom I was doing some office work had the book and recommended I borrow it.

I still have that original copy, well-loved and falling apart, filled with notes of two decades’ worth of experience.

While there are many amazing things about The Artist’s Way, the part that most deeply changed my life, or at least the part I’m most aware of today, is that I’ve been journaling almost daily since I started.  I’d been a diarist before then, off and on, but never took it seriously.  Quite by accident, I’ve become a serious diarist who is never without a journal in which to think, relax, play, work, rest, rage, and write.

Above all, write.

I have learned that one does not become a writer, one is born one.  Sometimes, whether by childhood trauma, societal prohibition, or simple lack of awareness, one has to remember oneself and recover one’s creativity.  But we are, all of us, creative.