Morning Pages

The number one tool to engage with your creativity is to write three pages of longhand, strictly stream of consciousness each morning right after you wake up.

This simple practice has been effective for millions of writers and creators worldwide since it was first shared by Julia Cameron in her international best-seller about creative recovery: The Artist’s Way – A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. 

What appears to be a pointless process at first, is in fact the most potent writing practice to jumpstart your creative adventures.

The main function is to release any thoughts that stand between you and your thriving creativity. Frankly, it is a brain dump in which you allow your mind to show itself to you on paper, unedited. Thus captured and acknowledged it can then relax and lower the voices of your inner censor. Granting you freedom to work on what matters most to you: Your creative projects. Your writing!

Here is How you Do it:
1. Get paper (A4 or 8-1/4 x 11-3/4 in)
2. Get a pen
3. Put pen on paper and write non-stop what ever is on your mind until three single pages are filled.
4. Repeat daily within the first 45 minutes after waking up without skimming or skipping.

There is no way you could do this wrong. Just write!
Your morning pages are not art. They are not even writing. But they can be anything else: stupid, wired, petty, angry, crazy, colorful, negative, fragmented, self-pitying, repetitive, bland, babyish or lazy. Nothing is ever too silly! Anything that comes up is safe to be written down.

Consider writing the morning pages as your daily meditation to clean your mental desk. More than that you can let them become your spiritual practice to connect you to the creator within. Making morning pages a nonnegotiable part of your life, will help you to recover, feed and nurture your creative self consistently. By doing anything to fill three pages of longhand each morning before you start your day, you can write yourself beyond the fears, doubts, limitations, negativities and moods of your logical brain (left hemisphere) that stop you from creating. Getting it all out on paper creates a space from which you can then access the associative areas your artist brain (right hemisphere). Here you will find the dreams, ideas, solutions, guidance, and wisdom that your subconscious mind holds ready for you to make your creative process more fluent and joyful.

Once you have completed filling your three pages: Let them be!

Don’t do this with your morning pages:

– Don’t read what you have written afterwards.
– Don’t show your morning pages to anyone – EVER!

To me the morning pages are my lifeline and a superhighway that connects me to the creator inside myself.

I first started to write morning pages in 2008 and they have been a loyal and much trusted companion ever since. Every night I put my notepad and pen next to where I sleep, knowing that in the morning these three pages will be my safe space to wake up to. Capturing nightmares and premonitions, memories and worries for the coming day. They also show my hopes and dreams to me. Any question that I put onto them seem to find it’s answer in the days ahead. 

Writing and reflecting unedited, unashamed and in private about all of me and my life has given me greater self-acceptance and compassion for all that hurts. But more so, it has nurtured my courage and commitment for all that wants to be created. 

Had I not started writing these silly, often angry and repeatedly desperate and depressing pages, I would never have dared to venture into becoming a healer and a writer. It was in the morning pages that I first read about these true passions of mine. It was across many lines that I followed this desire to create something wholesome in this world though words. I believe that I will because I made this promise to myself: I am writing my morning pages everyday.

And so can you!
Take Pen and Paper – Start Now – Repeat Tomorrow – Never Stop!
Write yourself a foundation to create from evermore…