I was never very good at keeping a journal. I have a few from high school and when I went to Europe after college. They’re pretty lame accounts of boys I was in love with who didn’t love me (and even a few who did). Boring! I’ll certainly never turn to them for plots, I can tell you that. However, about ten years ago, my parents gave me The Artist’s Way which actually changed my life in many ways, but one way in particular. The book is a twelve step program for “recovering your art”. Yeah, very self-help and hippie dippie sounding, but loads of fun too and like I said, life-changing for me. Anyway, one of the things that Julia Cameron, the author, has you do is write morning pages.
Morning pages are three handwritten pages of journal writing that you do…yep, every morning (the pages are full-size 8 1/2 by 11, no cheating with tiny journals). You do them before anything else (although, lately I’ve been building a fire so I don’t freeze my butt off while I’m writing) and the idea is that you write these pages before your brain really has time to wake up. Mostly they’re filled with “yesterday I cooked a great meal of…” and “it rained all day so I read my book…” and “I rode to the store yesterday and got milk…” Very trivial and boring stuff.
I know lots of people who have done these for a while and enjoyed them and then quit, or still do them off and on, but I’ve actually been doing them for ten years now, every day. It’s not discipline either (if I had to rely on self-discipline to get them done, I would never do them). It’s more like what morning coffee is to my husband. I have to do them. It’s what wakes me up and keeps me sane. They’re like therapy, but cheaper. They’ve gotten me through hard times, joyous times, and everything in between.
They have helped me immeasurably in writing…from plotting and planning to navigating the crazy publishing biz. If I bugged my agent about half the stuff that I wanted to instead of writing it in there, he would’ve ditched me ages ago as “too crazy to work with”! Lately, I’ve been plotting my WIP and today, the very last thing I wrote at the bottom of page three simplified everything for me and made my path to the ending so clear. Gosh, I love these pages. And even on bad or no writing days, I can always say, “I wrote for thirty minutes this morning” and console myself with that!
Do you journal? Have you read The Artist’s Way?
Wow, this post brings back memories. I loved The Artist’s Way — took a class, even. Did my pages for a long time. However, haven’t done pages in years — but your post has hopefully inspired me to get back into them! Mostly for, as you note, the fiction — giving myself mental space to develop and plot and brainstorm. I’m having trouble in the mental-space area right now…Cheers! Lisa
I’ve gone through stages where I have done this and others where I haven’t. This makes me feel like it might be time to do it again.
Except I have to make my own tea…but then, in Not-Summer, I write at the kitchen table anyway.
I’m a Morning Pages person too! I actually have Julia’s book on the end table beside my reading chair, and yesterday I realized I was almost finished with the 14th notebook! The two short stories that are being published at the end of the month in two different literary magazines are a direct result of morning pages work (usually, alas, on the porch in summer…) as is the WIP.
Yes and yes, although the morning pages are something I have to make myself do but once pen hits paper I’m fine.
Here she is in action
http://gabrioladailyphoto.blogspot.com/2008/10/morning-pages.html
I took the photo and then served her tea.