Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir by Julia Cameron. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
“Writing makes me a writer,” I tried out the simple truth.
Floor Sample is Julia Cameron’s memoir about addiction, mental illness, recovery, motherhood, and creativity. Cameron shares her descent into alcohol addiction, drug use, and the episodes of psychosis that led to her being hospitalised. She is also candid about her relationship breakdowns, her experience of motherhood and her changing relationship with her daughter, Domenica.
Floor Sample grabs your attention from the first page and doesn’t let up as we see how, throughout it all, Cameron built a creative life for herself — something she teaches others to do in The Artist’s Way. Cameron is a prolific writer, teacher, poet, playwright, filmmaker, composer, and journalist. More than once, I wondered, “how does she find the time to do everything?”
In reading the early chapters about their relationship, marriage, and divorce, I said, “how did I not know that Julia Cameron used to be married to Martin Scorsese?!” out loud multiple times. The story of their divorce is a wild ride, as is the impact their relationship had on Cameron’s career as a journalist. It’s almost twenty years since I did The Artist’s Way while taking a creative writing class in college. If their relationship was mentioned, I had forgotten about it, but it’s the kind of celebrity trivia I live for!
Memoirs never cover everything about a person’s life, and I understand that the UK release of Floor Sample last year was a reissue of a book initially published in the early 2000s. But there is one aspect of Cameron’s story that I need to know how it ended, and googling hasn’t given me the answer. At his insistence and the urging of her publisher, Cameron consented to have her former husband, Mark Bryan, added as a co-author of The Artist’s Way so that he could go on speaking and book tours while she recovered from her breakdown. Cameron said, “I do not like this decision, but I tell myself that I am being paranoid about its possible repercussions.” Did he voluntarily remove his name afterwards, or what happened?
Spirituality plays a huge role in Cameron’s sobriety and creativity, which means her work isn’t for everyone. I would have rolled my eyes a few years ago at this book. However, the older I get, and the longer I’m sober, the less inclined to judge individual people’s spirituality I’ve become.
I’ve dipped in and out of writing morning pages over the years but returned to it as a regular practice this year, so it was fascinating to read parts of Julia Cameron’s story alongside this rediscovery.
Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir by Julia Cameron is published by Souvenir Press (in Europe) and TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House (in the US). Floor Sample is available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.
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