Morning Pages
Recover and nurture your creativity.
“Morning pages will teach you that your mood doesn’t really matter. Some of the best creative work gets done on the days when you feel that everything you’re doing is just plain junk. The morning pages will teach you to stop judging and just let yourself write. So what if you’re tired, crabby, distracted, stressed? Your artist is a child and it needs to be fed. Morning pages feed your artist child. So write your morning pages.” — Julia Cameron
Having trouble believing you’re creative?
Feeling blocked in your creative efforts?
Morning pages address both problems head on.
Julia Cameron refers to them as “the primary tool of creative recovery.” They are a form of journaling done straight out of bed before the day truly begins. Here are the rules:
A stream of consciousness
Three pages of longhand writing
That’s it.
Pretty much anything goes with morning pages. They aren’t meant to be a form of art or even formal writing. They can be boring, repetitive, downright silly or profound. They can be about a recent dream, a persistent worry, errands, what to wear or an idea being worked out.
Seems pointless, right?
Well, here’s the point...
What often comes out is all forms of self immolation from your inner critic or saboteurs. And they are precisely the things cloaking or blocking your creativity. So think of morning pages as getting the sludge out of the creative pipes.
Don’t share morning pages with other people. They are for you and you alone. You’ll still find gems in the sludge being flushed out every morning. I find great raw material there for my work. You may too, but don’t feel pressured.
Do morning pages long enough, and you learn how to let your inner creative child come out and play. The structured, regimented part of you will whine and complain, but holding it at bay becomes less difficult over time. This effect carries over into your work as a creator or artist.
Give morning pages a try. It is a valuable tool for recovering and nurturing your creativity.
🤔 Food for Thought:
Do you see yourself as a non-creative person?
Are you scared to death of writing?
Give morning pages a go!
⚙️ One Small Step:
When writing morning pages, avoid attempts at structure, editing, spelling corrections and anything else that interrupts your stream of consciousness. You are flushing the pipes, so don’t interrupt the flow.
One of my favorite things to write about is my inner critic. I describe in detail what it says and how it attempts to subvert me. I enjoy finding some good in it and turning it to my advantage. Kind of like group therapy on paper.
If you can’t think of anything, stop thinking. Just write about how you can’t think of anything and how pointless this is. Aha! There is your inner critic blocking the flow.