30 Days of Morning Pages
This article originally appeared in the first issue of Antigone, Daydreamer. You can read it here.
The Goal
Coined by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way, morning pages is the practice of writing 3 pages of stream of consciousness ramblings, first thing in the morning. The purported benefits include learning to ignore the criticisms of your inner censor, breaking through writer’s block, and recovering your creativity.
My goal was to write three pages every morning for thirty days consecutively. Since I have already tried the longhand method, I decided to use 750words.com and type my morning pages instead of filling up yet another notebook.
The Experience
‘Boredom is just “What’s the use?” in disguise. And “What’s the use?” is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put everything on the page.’ — The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
When I first read this I thought Cameron was being a touch dramatic and making groundless leaps from boredom to fear to despair. But as I started with morning pages I found myself in all of these stages at least once.
I would often write “this is boring” or “I am bored out of my mind with morning pages” before progressing to the angry stage where I lament that morning pages is painfully useless: “what is the point of all of this?”, “I should be sleeping”, “I should be doing some real writing”. These statements did indeed have fear underlying them: What if I don’t have time today to write? What if I do have time to write but I find I have no ideas or that my ideas all suck?
Many morning pages practitioners Cameron herself included, report that some days they can only get complaints of boredom down on the page. But if you persist you will invariably start digging Ito these complaints because writing about how bored you are quickly becomes… well… boring. Soon enough you find yourself purging you fears. From what I’ve read, for most people this is the main benefit of morning pages because it sets the tone for the rest of their day.
After the second week I also noticed I was coming up with more ideas — at first not within the morning pages themselves, but rather during my day or during other writing sessions.
Françoise Sagan said ‘I have to start to write to have ideas’ and morning pages is the perfect way to just get writing so that the ideas can start flowing. It not only loosened up my creative writing muscles, it’s been ground zero for a number of other ideas from blog posts to business ideas to this very magazine.
The Verdict
Was it worth it? For the most part, yes. As someone who is decidedly not a morning person, waking up 30 minutes earlier to write three pages of nonsense is really not fun at first. To my surprise, the practice did eventually grow on me, to the point that writing is now easily the very first thing I think of when I wake up. The creative benefits of free writing and the personal benefits of clearing your mind of any and all worries at the start of the day are indisputable.
If you are severely “creatively challenged”, as Cameron puts it, don’t skimp on the first-thing-in-the-morning part. When you’re half asleep, your defences are down and the grit of the day hasn’t had a chance to settle in yet. It would also probably be best to write by hand in this case, as it forces you to slow down and examine your own thoughts, which can be hard if you’re a fast typer.
Another rule you should stick to regardless is not trying to turn morning pages into constructive, productive work time. This is not supposed to be 30 minutes of work squeezed in before coffee. Don’t start on emails you have to send later or draft blog posts or work on any projects.
Apart from the side benefits of clearing your mind and limbering up your creative muscles, morning pages should remain a mostly pointless practice. When you start trying to write well or turn it into an instrumental activity, it is no longer morning pages.
For writers this is particularly useful. So much writing is cut in the process of creating the final product readers eventually receive. Your first draft kind of has to be absolutely terrible. For every sentence in the final draft there should be ten, twenty, thirty that were deleted.
‘That’s the worst of writing — it’s waste.’ — Virginia Woolf
Get used to the waste of writing and realise that it is not waste, it is an inherent component of writing. The published work of writers is always only the tip of the iceberg. Without all the mass below surface, it would not be an iceberg. A writer who works solely with the intention of being efficient is not a writer.
I think students can also really benefit from morning pages. Academic writing and the mental challenge of wrangling all your ideas into something vaguely coherent is one of the hardest things to pull of well. Morning pages is an excellent way to loosen up from the stern tone of essays and papers, and your chances of coming up with new and creative ways to solve problems in your essay are significantly higher.
On a personal level it can also help a lot with any stress you might be dealing with due to school. I remember the weeks leading up to my first university exams I didn’t miss a single day’s morning pages because it was this guaranteed pocket of peace before the chaotic day that lay ahead of me. It taught me to be present and to be calm even in the face of uncertainty.
In each issue of Antigone, I’ll explore different habits that foster creativity for the period of one month and report back to you what the experience was like. If there is a creative practice you think I should try for 30 days, or if you’d like to share your own experience, let me know and I might feature it in the next issue of Antigone.
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