I can’t recall a time in my 20 or so years in journalism when I started an interview with a disclaimer, but then again I had never had Julia Cameron sitting before me.

“Part of the reason I’m a life coach is you,” I began. “So I cannot approach this like it’s just some interview. I don’t have objectivity and it’s very personal. The Artist’s Way is infused through what I do.”

Cameron -- the playwright, the song writer, the poet and the author of 25 books -- had just finished headlining a book event sponsored by Ladies Who Launch – a network that promotes entrepreneurship and creativity as a lifestyle – before 130 people at Barnes and Noble on 66th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Then she had signed copies of her new book, The Writing Diet, Write Yourself Right-Size, for most of those present.

Now here we were, she in a cushioned chair looking at me with her signature earnest eyes and nodding just the slightest bit as I spoke. I asked if people often say these kinds of things to her.

“I get recognized on the street,” Cameron said. “I once had a lady recognize me on the subway and say that the tools have changed her life. People usually use the same sentence – ‘Your book changed my life.’ And I always say, ‘No, you changed your life.’”

The book is, of course, The Artist’s Way and it has sold over 3 million copies since its publication in 1992. Cameron still teaches it because there is sustained demand for its thoughtful, spiritual approach to unblocking and nurturing creativity. It is, dare we say, timeless.

“I think that there is a need for creative unblocking,” Cameron said. “I think there’s a hunger for authenticity. And so I think there’s a place for my book, you know, because it’s sincerely intended to help.”

Its main tools--morning pages, artist dates and walks -- have been oft-repeated in her other books/courses and have become staples in the lives of so many. I consistently recommend them to my life coaching clients, many of whom are writers, but they work beautifully for professionals and other creatives as well. These tools came directly from Cameron’s own creative process. The morning pages are three pages of stream of consciousness writing to start the day and the results they produce are almost magical. The artist dates--something I wrote about in a previous Game Plan column – are weekly outings that feed the inner artist. And the walks, well, who doesn’t find a meditative walk clarifying and soothing to the soul?

These tried and true tools are a testament to the teacher, but the sustained creative productivity is a testament to the artist. Cameron wears the two continuously, simultaneously. That marriage is her legacy.

“I don’t have much tolerance for pain and it’s far more painful to be a blocked artist than it is to be an artist,” Cameron said. “So that’s what keeps me creating. You know, I just don’t want to know what it feels like not to create.”

She doesn’t know. She can’t know. Certainly not lately. Not when she can say that last year one of her plays was running in Los Angeles while she was writing opera and while she was finishing The Writing Diet. Not when she can say she has a musical opening in Chicago in the fall and that she is currently waiting for her agent's comments on the sequel to a novel she wrote. And, oh, that she just finished writing the opening section of another novel.

“When I’m ‘in’ making something, it always feels like this is the most happy thing,” Cameron said. “Whatever the particular thing is that I’m doing at the moment.”

Happy to be in this moment with her, I shared that I use her tools myself, and not just the “popular” ones. Like occasionally creating a collage by tearing images or words from magazines and then arranging them on a piece of newspaper or cardboard. The result is always telling.

“I did a collage about a year ago which was very clear that I needed more nature,” Cameron said. “I could see where I was feeling deprived in the middle of Manhattan and it was a real course adjustment.”

Of course it was. This is why the tools work. They are keeping this artist in her art by keeping her, as she says, “on the beam.” She particularly likes the tasks that require making lists – i.e., 20 wishes, gratitude, unfinished phrases like “If I let myself admit it, I feel …”

I told her one of my favorite exercises is the one where you list five people you admire, then list five people you secretly admire. The idea is to see what traits they have that you can cultivate in yourself. Howard Stern invariably pops up on my secretly admire list, I tell her. And hers?

“Well, just then Jessica Lange,” she said.

“Hmmm, why secretly?” I asked.

“Well I have a little bit of history with her,” Cameron said. “We were once friends and we aren’t friends any longer. And so I always follow her life at one removed and I think she’s been quite brave.”

Cameron has cultivated that trait. Anything about getting sober that she hadn’t already copped to in her other books, she chronicled in Floor Sample: A Memoir a few years ago. In fact, this came up because I told her I attended her Creativity Camp in Taos, New Mexico in 2001, but she was not there.

“No, I was having a nervous breakdown,” she said.

“I know that now because I read your memoir,” I said. “And when I saw the timing, I went …”

“That was me, that was my group,” Cameron said, finishing the sentence for me.

I tell her she was missed, but that it was still a life-transforming experience. Perhaps another testament to the tools.

“It’s good that you’re doing the work you’re doing,” Cameron said. “I bet you’re a demon at it.”

Yes, I am. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.