It was my friend Jenny who first told me about morning pages. I was wondering how she found the energy to be a creative writer whilst also being a full-time carer and studying for a Master's in psychology. She pointed me in the direction of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and, in particular, the section on morning pages.
Julia Cameron is the author of The Artist's Way, The Right to Write and a host of other books, plays and scripts. She is also an award-winning journalist. Cameron believes that we all carry an inner well of creativity that, for most of us, has been thwarted by self-doubt, uncertainty and the pressure to conform. She urges her readers to adopt a rigorous programme of 'recovery' to rediscover one's inner creativity. To do so, she argues, we need to connect with the higher power that lies behind the universe. Now I have to say I found all of this a bit off-putting with its resonances of Californian new-age spirituality; as a concept it all felt a bit 'woo'. But I pressed on with the practical exercises.
At the heart of Cameron's programme to stimulate one's creativity is a practice she calls her morning pages. Put simply, the morning page exercise requires your attention every morning as soon as possible after you get up and definitely before you start work. It requires you to write three sides of A4 in longhand each day. What you write is of no consequence at all, the important thing is the process, which is basically stream-of-consciousness writing. Cameron argues that this process is a kind of meditation that frees up one's creative urges. Looking at it in scientific in terms, it accords with psychological concept of flow.
Cameron insists that your morning pages should never be published nor shown to anyone else. In fact, you should never look back over your own pages once you've completed the day's exercise; again it's this emphasis on process and not content.
So, although I've never really kept up any of the other exercises recommended in The Artists Way, I've been keeping a morning pages journal on a more or less daily basis for some nine months now. That's an awful lot of words, so what do I write about? I write about what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, note down memories and draft my plans for the day. I use the journal to kick around ideas, make plans and rough drafts of things I want to work on. This last point is where I depart from Julia Cameron; I definitely go back into my previous journal entries, some of my best ideas are in there!
Have I noticed any changes since I started keeping my morning pages? Well, I won't say it's been a life-changing experience, but I do feel a discernible improvement in my focus and creativity; the exercise seems to get the creative juices flowing each morning. I'm doing a lot of creative writing, on top of my daily copywriting projects, and I've started writing poetry again after a lay-off of a couple of years.
You can take the whole thing on board, if that's what appeals, or you can select the bits that you find useful, like me with the morning pages. Either way, if you're interested in writing or any other creative endeavour, it's definitely worth having a look at The Artist's Way.
Julia Cameron is the author of The Artist's Way, The Right to Write and a host of other books, plays and scripts. She is also an award-winning journalist. Cameron believes that we all carry an inner well of creativity that, for most of us, has been thwarted by self-doubt, uncertainty and the pressure to conform. She urges her readers to adopt a rigorous programme of 'recovery' to rediscover one's inner creativity. To do so, she argues, we need to connect with the higher power that lies behind the universe. Now I have to say I found all of this a bit off-putting with its resonances of Californian new-age spirituality; as a concept it all felt a bit 'woo'. But I pressed on with the practical exercises.
At the heart of Cameron's programme to stimulate one's creativity is a practice she calls her morning pages. Put simply, the morning page exercise requires your attention every morning as soon as possible after you get up and definitely before you start work. It requires you to write three sides of A4 in longhand each day. What you write is of no consequence at all, the important thing is the process, which is basically stream-of-consciousness writing. Cameron argues that this process is a kind of meditation that frees up one's creative urges. Looking at it in scientific in terms, it accords with psychological concept of flow.
Cameron insists that your morning pages should never be published nor shown to anyone else. In fact, you should never look back over your own pages once you've completed the day's exercise; again it's this emphasis on process and not content.
So, although I've never really kept up any of the other exercises recommended in The Artists Way, I've been keeping a morning pages journal on a more or less daily basis for some nine months now. That's an awful lot of words, so what do I write about? I write about what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, note down memories and draft my plans for the day. I use the journal to kick around ideas, make plans and rough drafts of things I want to work on. This last point is where I depart from Julia Cameron; I definitely go back into my previous journal entries, some of my best ideas are in there!
Have I noticed any changes since I started keeping my morning pages? Well, I won't say it's been a life-changing experience, but I do feel a discernible improvement in my focus and creativity; the exercise seems to get the creative juices flowing each morning. I'm doing a lot of creative writing, on top of my daily copywriting projects, and I've started writing poetry again after a lay-off of a couple of years.
You can take the whole thing on board, if that's what appeals, or you can select the bits that you find useful, like me with the morning pages. Either way, if you're interested in writing or any other creative endeavour, it's definitely worth having a look at The Artist's Way.
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