Great Reminders for Writers from the Movie “Julie & Julia”

You are already a writer. When Julie Powell receives all of those phone calls from agents, editor, and producers — “Call me!” — she exclaims, “Eric, I’m going to be a writer.” His response is: “You ARE a writer.” Are you waiting for someone else to proclaim you a writer? Stop. Proclaim yourself a writer and start or keep writing.

Be passionate about the details. During her many adventures in French cooking, Julia writes to her friend Avis with her most recent discovery, if you don’t dry meat it doesn’t brown properly. She is so excited to learn this and so excited to share it, why? Because that’s how engaged she is by her own curiosity and passion for the topic and their mission. Every writer should be so engaged by his or her topic.

Everyone famous was once completely unknown. “Julia Child was not always Julia Child,” says Eric to Julie. Did anyone notice how incredibly hard both women worked? And yet I still get the sense that other writers are waiting for the magic bullet or the secret formula for lazy success. Hard work and passion even in the face of adversity is the only formula I know of for success. If you don’t have any good examples of what this looks like, watch this film and you will have two.

Someone doesn’t like you? So what? Julia notes that the woman who runs the Cordon Bleu cooking school “absolutely hates” her. This has never happened to her before. Everyone has always liked her. Even Parisians like her. So what if absolutely everyone doesn’t like you? Take a note from Julia when she says, “Boo-hoo. Now what?” And then do what you need to do without the 100% popularity, you only thought you needed.

Don’t get carried away. Julie Powell was no exception; writers often get carried away and overwhelmed. When Julie finds out that Julia doesn’t hold her work in high regard after she has put her on such a high pedestal for almost a whole year, she crumbles into a blubbering mess. Finally, her husband Eric sets her straight.

Julie: But she saved me.

Eric: You saved you.

Julie: I was drowning and she pulled me out of the ocean.

Eric: Don’t get carried away.

Don’t get mad, get better. Julia cutting an enormous pile of onions tells Paul that the men in her cooking class treat her “like a frivolous housewife.” Don’t let anyone treat you like a frivolous anything. And if someone does treat you badly, use your anger to get better, not bitter. (Thanks to Joe Konrath for that line.)

Keep your eye on the prize (whatever the prize may be for you). After the disappointing meeting with their Houghton Mifflin publishing team, Julia and Lisette are asking themselves, “Why did we ever decide to do this anyway? What were we thinking?” Chances are pretty good that most writers grossly underestimate the amount of work that it’s going to take to bring a project to completion. But this is one of the many ways we trick ourselves to get started or finish the job. For these authors, the reminder that they wanted to “write a French cookbook for American women who do not have cooks” was what they needed to remember to keep going. And, in the end, that is exactly what they did.

Savor this moment. When Julia is sending out her completed manuscript to her editors at Houghton Mifflin, she says to Paul, “I want to savor this moment. The moment when anything is possible, when you can just imagine they are going to love everything you did and it’s going to sell a million copies and change the world.” Dream big. Why not? If you do the work, and follow through, it just might happen. But while you are working for the future, don’t forget to savor THIS moment, too.

Let me know what else you gleaned from the movie, Julie & Julia in the comments below…