I’ve struggled with Morning Pages for years. I would do them for a bit and then quit. Start again. Quit again. Repeat. Then last week I finally worked out why: I understand the problem with Morning Pages and I know how to fix it.
If you don’t already know, Morning Pages is a writing practice started by Julia Cameron, aimed at blocked artists. The idea is to write, by hand, three pages of stream of consciousness writing first thing in the morning. You can write about anything and everything – whatever comes to mind. Don’t think, don’t second guess, don’t worry about punctuation, spelling or grammar. Just write. Don’t worry about how well you’re writing or whether it even makes sense. Purge, rant, whine, complain, rage, go round in circles, bore yourself silly. It doesn’t matter. Just write.
If you don’t already know, Morning Pages is a writing practice started by Julia Cameron, aimed at blocked artists. The idea is to write, by hand, three pages of stream of consciousness writing first thing in the morning. You can write about anything and everything – whatever comes to mind. Don’t think, don’t second guess, don’t worry about punctuation, spelling or grammar. Just write. Don’t worry about how well you’re writing or whether it even makes sense. Purge, rant, whine, complain, rage, go round in circles, bore yourself silly. It doesn’t matter. Just write.
You don’t have to be blocked to use Morning Pages. Writing
like this can clear all the junk and clutter out of your head so you’re free to
write ‘for real’ later. The idea is to “catch
yourself before your ego’s defences are in place”, which is why you need to
write longhand. Writing by hand seems to make it easier to access your emotions
and get what’s in your head out in a similar way to talking therapies. Your
journal or the empty page acts as an unconditionally accepting sounding board
and creates space for you to hear and accept your feelings. Sometimes you might
not even realise you’re feeling or thinking something until you’ve written it
down.
Morning Pages? Yawning Pages
When I first started practising Morning Pages I found it
hard to write first thing in the morning because I had a day job. My brain
would take a long time to warm up once I’d hauled myself out of bed and
grimaced at myself in the mirror. I could barely hold a pen, let alone write
anything. I was too concerned with all the other things I had to do: getting
dressed, eating something and dragging myself to work. Writing waffle about
nothing wasn’t high on my list of priorities. So my first attempts simply
wasted ink and paper and time.
It also seemed self-indulgent. Julia Cameron would say
that’s precisely the point – to get all the bullshit out of the way so you can
get down to some proper creativity. But in my case the same issues would come
up over and over, ad nauseam. Maybe I have a spectacularly dull life, but I
couldn’t see the point in complaining endlessly about trivial things I probably
shouldn’t have been obsessing about in the first place.
Also, because I knew I didn’t have long to write and only
three pages to fill, I never relaxed into it. My mind was always focused on the
next thing I had to do. If I did uncover a feeling or thought that needed
further investigation, I knew I didn’t have the time or space to get into it.
So my Morning Pages felt like a wasted opportunity.
Free Writing
Free writing is a great therapeutic tool and I use it
regularly to excavate and explore. I’ve written myself through many crises and
confusions, issues I couldn’t put into my ‘real’ writing because they were
still too raw and undigested. But I can’t do it at a set time and only for a
fixed number of pages. Doing it that way goes against the nature of the
practice. The whole point, it seems to me, is to do it when you need to do it.
I used it to dig myself out of a slump last week and it took
hours. I stopped and started and paused to think and, in the end, covered
nineteen pages. Nineteen! But that’s what I needed
to do in order to reach a breakthrough with that particular problem. It takes
me a while to get down to the right level to let rip. Once the ball is rolling
– or the pen is moving – I can keep going until I can literally no longer hold
the pen. Which isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Julia Cameron says you should stop after three pages to
avoid “self-involvement and narcissism.”
That’s good advice. There have been times when I’ve recognised that I’m going
in circles and it’s time to stop. Sometimes writing about stuff just makes it
worse. However, if I had stopped in mid-flow last week I wouldn’t have got to
the breakthrough and that time writing would have been wasted, and more
importantly, I would still have been blocked.
This brings me to the problem I have with free writing in
general, and Morning Pages specifically. The idea is to empty your mind and
loosen it up so you can get into the flow and write more freely – but then you have to stop writing.
Why stop just as you’re getting into it?
You have to stop because you’re doing the writing before
you’ve started your day. You get up, quick trip to the loo, perhaps a glass of
water, and then write. Then you stop, have breakfast, sort yourself out and do
whatever else you have to do, before returning to your writing at some point
later in the day. After which, time has passed, your head has filled with all
the usual crap again and you’re back to square one. So what was the point of
the Morning Pages?
If you did achieve a breakthrough in the morning, perhaps
you can pick it back up when you return to writing later, but you might have to
wade through all the usual distractions first. So here’s the thing:
Morning Pages are
unproductive and a waste of time.
There, I said it. You can shout at me in the comments if you
disagree, but hear me out first. Here comes the solution.
A Writing Practice That Works
There are good reasons for writing first thing in the
morning. It can be the best time for creative thoughts because the brain has
only just woken up and the prefrontal cortex is still ticking over from
dreaming. So this can be a good time to get some writing done.
The problem with Morning Pages is the undirected nature of
the writing. If you want to write first thing and make the most of your dreamy
brain, then you need to be prepared. It makes no sense to just write any old
crap when you could be using the time more productively. This is especially
true these days when we’re all so busy. Writing in an unfocused way is just
brain vomit.
To get the most out of Morning Pages focus on something
specific that you need to work out, like a story idea you’ve been mulling over,
or perhaps something that came up in a dream the night before. I often wake up
with new ideas, solutions to problems or connections between things I’ve been
thinking about. That’s what you should be writing about when you get up – not
wasting your creative juices doing mental house cleaning or purging brain
vomit.
If you focus on an idea that’s interesting and inspiring
enough, the distracting chatter in your head will fall away of its own accord
and you’ll be free to get on and write.
If you’re blocked and you find it hard to get past the
critical part of your brain, even first thing in the morning, then that should
be the focus of your Morning Pages. There’s a reason for all that noise in your
head – you’re spinning your mental wheels trying to get away from something.
It’s resistance. And you know what the Borg have to say about that – Resistance is Futile!
Stream of consciousness writing is perfect for digging up
the bones of your past and helping to confront your subconscious. Your shadow
is where your greatest treasures hide, heaped under mounds of denial. It’s a
shame you have to wade through so much shit to get to the good stuff, but
that’s where your treasure is buried.
When you’re blocked it’s usually because there’s something
in your shadow that you’re avoiding, so the solution is to move towards it
instead. Investigate, ask yourself questions, write about the blockage and your
feelings about being blocked. Doing that will free you up – eventually.
None of this writing has
to be done first thing in the morning. If it works for you, then great – keep
doing it. If it doesn’t work, then perhaps you could try my new improved
version of Morning Pages:
In the morning, before breakfast, write for 10 – 20 minutes
on whatever project you’re working on, any ideas that have come up overnight,
problems you need to find solutions for, etc. Just get what’s in your head out
and onto the page without worrying about it too much – but keep it focused.
If there’s nothing to write about – don’t write anything! Sit
and meditate for 10 – 20 minutes instead, if you like. Or just stare out the
window. Whatever. Don’t worry about it – just be with whatever is present in
your life at the moment.
Later when you come to do your actual writing, begin with a
session of free writing. In a notebook, write for however long it takes to
breakthrough into the flow state. As soon as you feel your mind relaxing and
the words start to come easily – jump into your project and write like the
wind! You can switch to the computer at that point if you want, or write in the
project’s notebook – whatever routine you have. If you don’t have a particular
project (story/novel/poem/play) on the go, then you can use the ideas that came
up in the morning writing session, if you had one.
Doing it this way means you’re not losing momentum. You can
jump straight from the free writing into your ‘proper’ writing and hit the
ground running. That way, if you only have a limited amount of time in which to
write, you don’t waste it dicking about.
If you want to really kick start your writing, then you can
include a spot of meditation just before you begin the free writing session.
This can help to ease you into writing by clearing away much of the noise
before the pen even meets the page.
There’s one more thing I need to address: Julia Cameron
would say that Morning Pages aren’t meant to be productive. You’re not supposed
to write about anything in particular. You’re meant to just write and not worry
about how it turns out. Having a specific goal in mind can interrupt the flow
and cause blockages. It’s a kind of stage fright. The red recording light goes
on and you get self-conscious. The ego gets hold of the idea that writing is
important and then you expect too much of yourself. And then you get blocked. That’s
the beauty of free writing – it removes the pressure.
It may look like you’re not trying to achieve anything when
you’re writing Morning Pages the way Julia Cameron advises. But don’t be
fooled. The intention behind the action is to clear the mind and unblock the
creative juices. That’s a goal. You might approach it in the spirit of play –
just write and see what happens. That’s another goal.
Anything you do is an intentional act – you just have be
honest with yourself about your true motivations.
Most people write Morning Pages because they want to become
better writers. That’s a good goal to have. All I’m doing with Productive Pages
is moving them to a point in the day where they’ll be of most use to me in my
writing practice. It’s still free writing but within a more focused context.
Including the option to not
write is also important. It’s possible to get too attached to working in one
particular way. Morning Pages isn’t the only way to unlock your writing and
find your voice. Listening in silence to nothing is also helpful. One of the
things I realised during my big free writing session last week was: maybe I
don’t always need to write. Maybe sometimes I can stop trying to achieve
something and just be.
I found that unfocused Morning Pages tended to make the
noise in my head worse. The same old stuff would keep coming up and it never
changed. Even after a breakthrough, the worn out old patterns would start up
again at some point. I’ve been writing my way through problems for 25 years and
only recently realised I would never be free of this stuff if I just wrote
about it.
The same old stories and fears I’ve had going around inside
my head since I can remember aren’t even touched by words. No amount of writing
will shift those patterns. My deepest and darkest problems have emotional roots
that are pre-verbal. There’s only one way I know to shift them – and that’s to
uproot the self altogether. Surrender in silence to the stillness of my true
Self.
And when I listen to that silence, to my inner voice, this
is what it tells me:
Shhhh!
Do you write Morning
Pages? Share your experience below…
