Okay, I had this phenomenal experience with The Artists' Way by Julia Cameron. Sure, I had to substitute the word "Universe" where she said "God," but basically, I am a believer in the premise that if you believe in yourself and your talent and are really truly open to it and diligent in practicing it, opportunity will come to you. I did it. It worked. I got stuff published and that part was really, really cool. Anyway, I read this article in the LA Times a couple weeks ago about her, which was a bit unflattering...to no real end.

The piece intimated that Julia Cameron was not-so-successful as a writer and also seemed to derive some pleasure from pointing out her battles with mental illness and addiction as evidence towards a larger case that she "got lucky" when she inspired all these people because she's just as fucked up as the rest of the world. In fact, the story hinted that attending a book reading/signing by Ms. Cameron was likely to be a bubble-bursting reality check for her legions of devotees. It really just made me want to come to her defense.

I would like to point out that Julia Cameron never pretends she hasn't had dark moments with addiction and whatnot. She just doesn't dwell on that in the book. That would be annoying, and beside the point of the program--which is meant to inspire, not focus on her time when she felt like a total loser.

Anyway, the fact that the article's author didn't really consider her a successful writer seemed pretty laughable. After all, she wrote The Artists Way, didn't she? A book that is wildly successful and in maybe the 10th edition of printing at this point? I'd call that successful writing, but looks like the hater at the Times missed that entirely from his vantage point on top of that pedestal of hard-hitting entertainment beat journalism.