What I've Learned From Writing Morning Pages Every Day for Four Months
The upsides of writing stream-of-consciousness morning pages plus the downside.
At the beginning of this year, here on my Substack, a group of us embarked on a readalong of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. We are still reading it, currently on Chapter Nine out of twelve, and diligently working our way through the words and exercises as well as attending to our Artist Date and writing our Morning Pages.
Morning Pages are something I had heard mentioned frequently over the past few years but hadn’t read up on what they were all about. I knew it was writing streams of consciousness down into your journal but I didn’t know why that was important.
As Julia explains:
“Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness.'Oh, god, another morning. I have NOTHING to say. I need to wash the curtains. Did I get my laundry yesterday? Blah, blah, blah…’ They might also, more ingloriously, be called brain drain, since that is one of their main functions.”
Three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. Every morning. Julia believes:
“All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and your creativity.”
So that’s what they are, but WHY should we do it?
Because Julia believes they get us to “the other side of our fear, of our negativity, of our moods. Above all, they get us beyond our Censor.”
I’ve only been doing them for four months and have found that they’ve helped me empty my mind of stuff that really doesn’t matter, they’ve helped my mild anxiety,
they’ve helped me manifest, they’ve helped me work things out and they’ve helped me come up with creative ideas and get the Big Scary Project finished.
The following is also what I discovered:
I used an A4 spiral bound pad that I would only use for morning pages. It was sturdy and could bend back on itself so I could write anywhere (for example, in bed, where I’ve written most of my pages).
My hand really ached when I started writing. Which just goes to show how out of practice I was at writing long hand.
In the beginning, I was constantly worried whether I was doing it ‘right’. This was actually a bit of a mind-messer and an issue I felt affected a number of us doing The Artist’s Way readalong. The way I interpreted it though was that I was attempting to just empty my mind of all the irrelevance in there: all the niggling bits of mild anxiety, the stuff I would stress about and circle over and over in my mind. For example in the car this morning I was worrying about whether I was taking too many hormones and how I’d reduce it. This had the opportunity to play in my mind all day so when I got home I wrote my morning pages and confronted those thoughts. They’re now no longer dominating my head which is why I’ve got the headspace to write this. Morning pages are not there to come up with the big ideas. They’re not specifically to write about your creativity. They’re just there to scrape away at the crud that gets in the way of the creativity.
I noticed that I was acting too much like a writer in my first few attempts. I thought there had to be a beginning, a middle and an end. Like in an essay or a Substack post. That I had to plan what I was going to write in my head beforehand. And, of course, this is not what you do at all. So it takes practice to just write what’s in your head as it comes to you.
Sometimes (in fact many times), I wouldn’t write them in the morning but in the evening. Personally, I prefer writing in the morning but it’s not always possible. I aimed for three A4 pages but found I just couldn’t do them. Time constraints were a big factor (I didn’t write fast enough plus my hand was cramping - incidentally some people find that typing the pages works best for them). I decided very early on not to beat myself up if I didn’t write more than I could write. Sometimes it was just half a page.
BUT. Having said that I found I felt better when I wrote more than one page.
I think from memory Julia suggests three pages because once you’ve got rid of the looser stuff from your head you get into the deeper stuff. Personally, I find once I’ve written and expelled everything loose in my head then I stop. I just cannot keep going. Again, maybe this is a time thing. With the school run at the beginning and the end of the day I’ve umpteen tasks to do in between that time and writing, waiting for the deeper stuff to come means I lose time on my writing projects. Quite honestly, and you might be different, I don’t want to spend more than thirty minutes writing about my thoughts.
Sometimes I struggle with what to write and literally spell out blah, blah, blah. On other occasions, I come to the page and I’m very angry, very emotional and I let my thoughts fly. I swear, I get disagreeable, I get child-like. I push aside my embarrassment that someone might one day read my words (honestly, they might get burned at some point so I may as well empty it all out). Instead of getting emotional with someone who has annoyed me I get all this stuff on the page and by the time I see the person again I can talk rationally and with empathy. But acknowledging that I feel this way also means I can be rational with myself and gently explain why things have been the way they have.
I don’t think I’ve come up with an idea for my creativity on the actual pages. BUT. I have become clearer in the direction I want to go in (more writing, fewer videos) and I’ve come up with an idea I’d like to explore further. Yesterday I even bought a creative course to work through.
On the downside, I’ve found that writing morning pages does get in the way of my other writing and journaling. This might be a temporary thing because just a few days ago I found myself scribbling ideas down in my writing journal. But it’s almost like I’ve tricked myself into thinking that I’ve done my writing for the day because I’ve written two pages of morning pages. When really, I haven’t even started yet.
Do you write morning pages? How are you finding it?
I was really happy to see this in my inbox today as I also started The Artist's Way this week. I'm on week 1. I read the introductory pages and Week 1. Something that is coming up for me is - what am I going to get out of the morning pages and artists dates since I already do them? I didn't know that MP came from Julia and TAW, I think I learned of them through someone's YouTube many years ago and I put it in practice during the first initial 2020 shut down. To this day, MP are a crucial part of my morning routine. There are times where my life is just a little too crowded and I don't do it every single day, but I do my best and then I get back to the practice as soon as possible. So, now that there is this aspect of it being part of TAW program, I'm not sure if my attitude about it will change or not...
I am a single person who lives alone and I do quite a bit all on my own, so I'm really struggling with the artists dates too - what am I going to do to make it feel more like an artist date?
I tried morning pages many moons ago but didn’t continue with them because it felt like a duplication of other journaling I was doing. I’ve also only done the rare artist’s date even though Julia espouses those too. I’ve taken her suggestions to mean stay connected to your inner world (morning pages) and nurture your inner writer (artist’s date). So yeah, I’ve just got my own version of those. Thanks for sharing your experience Helen!