I’d come across the idea of “morning pages” a few years ago. They’re the brainchild of Julia Cameron, of The Artist’s Way fame. (Personally I’m not really a fan of The Artist’s Way – it’s too religiously focused to me, and not in a way I find at all appealing. But that’s personal taste, and neither here nor there.) Morning pages are three A4 (or letter in America) pages of writing. You do it in the morning (or whenever you get up – let’s be honest here, fellow writers), and they can be whatever you want. Babble. Nonsense. What you will do today. What you dreamt about last night. How interminable today’s morning pages seem to be.
I gave it a go this morning. Writing in an A5 notebook, I studiously doubled the pages, and wrote six. Much of it was stream-of-consciousness. My basic understanding is that this exercise is meant to clear and focus your mind of debris in preparation for the day, but I’m afraid my mind doesn’t really work like that…. I can start up a stream of consciousness and keep it going for quite a while. That’s often how I journal, in fact. It’s what I’m doing right now. Taking words from my brain and putting them on a word-space.
Many people have found morning pages useful, so I am determined to give them a proper go: two weeks, and then I’ll assess how they’ve served me before deciding whether to keep on with the experiment for another fortnight. I’m not writing well at the moment, and not writing often, so I’m in a position to take whatever help I can get. On the other hand, I confess to feeling a bit afraid that this may help in no way at all, and have only two weeks’ worth of six-page “gosh the sky is a nice blue. Spring has been late in coming this year” babble to show for it. I feel as if at some point, there is meant to be some manner of revelation upon which one starts writing creatively or something, during these morning pages. That was not my experience today. I could have kept writing, but just because I was in a stream-of-consciousness journalling sort of mood; it would have been perfectly suitable journalling material, but poor creative writing. This has helped many people creatively, so if it does not help me, am I beyond help? In two weeks will I be back here denigrating this tool?
We’ll see. For now I will think hopeful thoughts and keep at it.
*waves* Hiya from Tumblr. 🙂 I’d give it at least a month, truthfully. And hey, if you end up with just 180 A5 pages of stream-of-consciousness rambling, well, it was just a really epic journaling month?
This was the post that made me decide to give morning pages a shot (including the links within the post):
http://vacuousminx.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/organizing-2015/
She no longer blogs on that site, so any future updates will be at her new site:
http://readerwriterville.wordpress.com/
Thanks Chris! You’ve been a big help 🙂
Morning pages do not seem to work for me!!! But then I’m already used to journalling, and writing stream of consciousness like…but I do it in the evening or at night, when my brain is actually awake and working. And I gain many many insights…a lot of new thoughts and ideas open up to me. I get some things off my chest.
But doing them in the morning? Longhand? Well, my hand and arm cramps up (but maybe I can work on that) and all it seems to do, writing then, is to stir up a whole lot of negative energy that is in me, start writing it out on paper….then stop. Then, for the rest of the day, I have all these negative thoughts and worries swirling around in my head.
What’s pissing me off the most is that the author (and other people) are so adamant that this is how it works, this is how it has to be!! Writing on the computer doesn’t work. Writing at night doesn’t work. Writing more or less than three pages doesn’t work. Bullshit I say!! I’m going to keep trying these morning pages for just a bit longer anyway….just to see if something magical happens….but what I do know, is that I have way more than three pages of stuff in me. And getting it all out in the morning, or at least starting to, just dregs up all this stuff so that I’m worrying and pondering it all day. It does.not.work.for.me. 🙁
Yeah, didn’t work for me either. And the “it always works, for everyone! You’ll see!” is a bit frustrating. It makes you feel a little disconnected when it just doesn’t work for you. I get a bit stressed out when that sort of thing happens. But yeah, it didn’t work for me at all. It ended up taking up a huge chunk of my day just getting all the pages written because there was nothing to say. I much prefer taking stock at the end of a day anyway. 🙂 Do what works for you, I say, whether that’s journalling every day, once a week, or not at all. Whether you write for 10 pages or only half a page.