My Journey With Morning Pages
Another motivational piece on showing up
There are certain habits that I wish I’d developed by now, like meditating, or working out consistently, or eating a more plant-based diet. These are all aspects of myself that I envision when I think of the ideal me.
Four months ago, I took one step closer to becoming the person — the writer — that I wanted to be. I developed one habit that has completely changed my life: I began doing morning pages.
Essentially, morning pages is freewriting three pages every morning in a dedicated journal. This is a simple, yet extraordinary exercise featured in one of the most widely cited books for creatives: The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. Cameron claims that this habit helps to unblock creativity and to allow the fullest, most authentic expression of self.
This, I find to be wildly accurate.
In a short four months, I went from being a writer who only wrote when I felt compelled to (which was not often and definitely not regularly), to becoming a writer with a daily writing ritual. I got a clearer sense of what my voice sounded like and I began to get into flow state with my writing.
In the beginning, I treated the pages as a space to record my dreams since that was usually the first thing on my mind when I woke up. I would prop my head upon my free hand and command my writing hand to move, literally feeling my brain transform thoughts into words on the page. My will to go back to sleep was strong, but another part of me fought to do better.
After a few weeks of pathetically writing while half asleep, I graduated to sitting by my window with my journal and a cup of coffee. I would thank the Universe for another beautiful day, say hello to my four plants (now five), and then proceed to write.
I have since completed one journal and am on the way to finishing a second. I have written over 366 pages of writing, documenting some of the most garbage writing I am capable of producing. And that, I am not ashamed of.
Morning pages is explicit permission to write the shittiest three pages that you are capable of. The unbearable weight of your perfectionist standards rolls off your shoulders, and you feel lighter and freer to express yourself and to experiment with your craft.
Essentially, you are retraining your brain to honor the creative outlet for your thoughts and ideas. Instead of shoving them back down inside of you like you’re so used to doing all the time, you write it all down. You write it down even if it doesn’t make sense, even if some of these thoughts sound ludicrous. No one will read it. No one will judge you. This is a completely safe space between you and yourself.
Finding Your Flow
When you allow yourself to write without critical judgment of what you produce, you end up having free reign over your work. You get out of your own way and let words flow out of you with ease.
Getting into flow state is not a privilege reserved only for certain writers. Anyone can get into flow state, but the trick is to not force it.
I have found that when you actively try to force and manipulate something to go according to your plan, oftentimes, you achieve the opposite results.
Flow state is that perfect point of equilibrium between action and non-action, and the magic happens when the two flirt with each other. The action here is: you sitting down to write, the non-action: letting your words come to you.
Morning pages help to set up the environment for you to slip into and out of flow state when you are ready. It doesn’t happen every single time I sit down to write but, I am ready when it does occur. I don’t try to force myself to enter this magical realm of flow. I just go along with the ride and feel giddy when I have written pages and pages of words I didn’t know I had inside of me.
Recognizing Your Authentic Voice
Sound
An important aspect of your writing is defined by your voice. When you write morning pages, you are recording the conversations that you have with yourself. You’re not speaking out loud, but the words you write are the physical manifestations of the ideas and conversations inside of your head. What words you choose and how you put them together make up your specific style and ultimately, your specific voice.
How do you sound?
Get in the habit of listening to your voice — no matter how faint or loud it whispers. Recognize what makes your voice yours, and preserve as much of that authenticity as possible.
Because when you learn to write how you speak, you become a better writer.
Vulnerability
Vulnerability is having the courage to accept yourself for who you are and to share who you are with the world. When we write, we are sharing bits and pieces of ourselves with our readers through words.
One of the hardest things about writing well is to allow yourself to be vulnerable in your writing — to show some personality in your work. Retaining your authentic voice allows you to show up in your work as your true self, and that makes a world of difference between good writing and bad writing.
If you haven’t met yourself in your own writing, how can you expect your readers to meet you?
Morning pages is a space for you to communicate with yourself in the most honest way possible. Be painfully vulnerable in your morning pages. When you can share yourself with yourself in private, you can learn to share yourself with your readers in public. It becomes easier and less daunting.
Practice and consistency help to build confidence. Keep showing up as you so that being anyone else but, feels more unnatural than simply being yourself.
So, Just Freewrite?
If you are a writer who wishes to become more disciplined in writing, or you’re a writer who wants to learn how to be more vulnerable in your work, morning pages is a great habit to help you develop those qualities.
It doesn’t matter what you call them. It doesn’t matter when you do them. It doesn’t even matter what you produce from your pages. The most important thing is, like Nike’s motto, to Just Do It.
If I hadn’t shown up on that second day or that third day, or all the days that followed, I would have given up on morning pages completely. I would have given myself the OK to just go back to writing whenever I felt like it — with no structure or routine.
I would have reverted back to being the artist-writer living a broke writer’s dream.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You choose how you show up.
If you can’t write a masterpiece right now, you can most certainly write three shitty pages. Do it. Develop your writing habit, and trust that better ideas will come. Your writing will improve and flow. You’ll recognize yourself in your words.
You’ll also get to look back on and read the conversations that you have with yourself. This is where self-reflection and growth take place. This is also a very good place for sourcing ideas for new writing.
Take the pressure off of yourself. Take the gag off.
You have wonderful ideas that deserve to be written down, so don’t let them die inside of your head.
Morning pages is something solely between you and yourself. Honor that space and keep writing.
