Today is the first day of the rest of my life.
I often feel that way when I embark on a new endeavor or, or as in this case, reembark on an old endeavor I never should have abandoned. I started writing morning pages, an exercise in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, about 2_1/2 years ago. Also, about 2_1/2 weeks before having a baby. That might have been where I went wrong, trying to make a big change when another big change was just about to emerge.
But excuses aside, it’s time to start afresh. What are the morning pages? Well, for those of you interested in a little creative reawakening, it is a tool to help you unload emotional baggage and get in touch with your inner artist. And for those of you who are already thriving artists, it’s a tool to help you unload emotionalbaggage and get in touch with your inner artist.
It is not a writing exercise, though it involves putting words (or approximations thereof) on paper. Rather, it is a stream-of-consciousnes information dump involving pouring the contents of your brain onto pieces of paper and then, probably, never reading them again.
Can’t spell? So what? Writing not your forte? No one’s gonna read it. Maybe not even you. You can write and you’re tempted to practice your poetry in your morning pages? Cut it out. You’re missing the point.
The morning pages are three pages of longhand writing done first thing in the morning, before you’re really even particularly awake. You don’t stop writing or even pick your pen up off the paper. You jstu write whatever comes into your mind. If nothing comes to mind, you can write that for three pages. If you’re thinking about the laundry, write about the laundry. Whatever comes to mind, no holds, no censors.
The point of doing this longhand isn’t to give your hand a cramp (although that’s what happened to me this morning), it’s a kinesthetic exercise that connects you with the words far more than if you let your fingers fly across a keyboard.
Think of it as a sort of active meditation.
I loved starting out the morning that way for the month and a half I kept it up and I hope to fall easily back into the pattern as a way to explore new avenues of creativity. (ie I don’t know what to write next and I’m hoping this will help. :=) ) Morning pages are a terrific tool if you need a complete creative recovery, but they are also useful to those of us who only need a little nudge or who want to keep the flame alive.