As a kid I’ve always written in diaries. Perhaps because I never had a best friend until I was 14 and that lasted 2-3 years and we fell out. And I was brought up never to share emotions with outsiders and no one was there to share with at home either. So I wrote - I wrote angst filled notebooks - but weirdly longed for a reader… until I decided to leave home and then destroyed them - I can’t even remember the details of what I did with them - but I know they are gone!
As a writer, I know I need to connect with my mind and inner thoughts. I want to be able to write about the true feelings even if they are wrapped in a story about someone else. I wondered what people did when they journaled. How do people write their auto-biographies? How do they remember the details? How can they be correct about them?
Then during COVID, I discovered The Artists’ Way by Julia Cameron. I thought I was stuck in the house in two different countries - I will start. I read the book, did the exercises and the habit of morning pages stuck.
I wrote long hand in a notebook for almost two years, every morning. Sure there were days I missed. But I did write them religiously - 3 pages each day. But my hoarding brain was panicking. How many notebooks are you going to fill? How will you keep track of them? Who will destroy them after you die! Hoarding and Alarmist brain, I suppose. Unlike my teenage angst, these should not be read by anyone, especially anyone I know. These are my everyday shallow brain frustrations, the top of the mind concerns, the boring details of life.
I then shifted from notebook to an app. I use Day One now - and write every day in it - and sometimes I feel I should go back to the notebook. But my spicy brain says then they are all in different places - hard to organise. Maybe I will go back to the notebook, maybe I will buy Remarkable Pro that is a notebook but digital. Who knows?
The point is - I write morning pages every day - some days it’s hardly a paragraph. Other days I’ve planned my day, my week and my year in it. I talk to myself in it. I tell myself off, give me some advice, and often argue and debate. This is important to me because I need to have considered each of my concerns on paper before I react to the outside world.
Often my morning pages are about the creative process or the bottlenecks in the process. Sometimes it is about friends or family concerns or sometimes it is about the career or money coming in. Basically whatever is troubling me that morning. That way I have downloaded my shallow and bubbling emotions on page and when I get to write, I’m not thinking about an argument or a stress inducing meeting coming up. Those are safely listened to, considered, and left to rest. I might not have solved a problem in my morning pages, but I sure learnt how to cope with it by writing about it.
I have to remind myself in my morning pages that I don’t like to do something, so no point in feeling left out when someone got the gig. Or I have to remind myself that I wanted to spend a day doing nothing. Or what I should send to my agent. There is literally nothing I can’t write in it.
I’d strongly recommend doing it for those who are in the stage of life when family, responsibilities and career are all colliding into one another and it feels like everyone is wringing your heart tighter and tighter. If you’re a young writer, then it is good to take the time to reflect on your daily life. If you’re a new writer, but not fresh out of teenage angst, I’d highly recommend it. You need to empty your mind on to the page so new stuff can bubble up.
Do you write morning pages? Has it helped you? Share your thoughts.