In high school I carried a spiral notebook everywhere I went, recording everything that went on during the day.\u00c2\u00a0 Long before Twitter and Facebook, my notebook was my social media of the 1980\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.
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\nWhen I was younger, I journaled when I got home from school.\u00c2\u00a0 By 8th or 9th grade, I felt the need to have the journal with me at all times \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I wanted to ability to write whenever I needed to.\u00c2\u00a0 The journals were simple spiral notebooks.\u00c2\u00a0 I wrote in them constantly, sometimes journaling through class, pretending to be taking notes.\u00c2\u00a0 The daily rants were usually about whatever boy I was obsessed with, interspersed with my inability to fit in, be thin, date a rock star or have more than a handful of close friends.<\/p>\n
I hated high school.\u00c2\u00a0 This is evidenced by a pile of notebooks that share in intimate detail how depressed, anxious and hurt I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d become by the time I was halfway thru the experience.\u00c2\u00a0 The notebooks continued into my late 20\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, detailing dating (or the lack thereof), vacations, job changes, guitar purchases, being in and out of debt.\u00c2\u00a0 And then the journaling tapered off.<\/p>\n
Along with playing music, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d put writing to the side.\u00c2\u00a0 All writing: no stories, no journals.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of this was due to computers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c email had replaced letters, and word processing had begun to replace my notebook.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been taking classes in addition to working.\u00c2\u00a0 There was the occasional boyfriend.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d started gaming.\u00c2\u00a0 But ultimately, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d put my creativity on hold.\u00c2\u00a0 I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t writing.<\/p>\n
This process of journaling starts and stops several more times through my 30\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.<\/p>\n
While standing in Barnes & Noble yesterday, I found myself staring at Julia Cameron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Artist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Way.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read parts of it, but not the entire book.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been told by many to respect the Morning Pages.\u00c2\u00a0 Morning Pages are 3 pages of stream of consciousness writing done when one first wakes up.\u00c2\u00a0 For some reason, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been resistant to Morning Pages.\u00c2\u00a0 Which for a writer makes no sense, but there you go.<\/p>\n
Ok, I thought, standing there looking at the book.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to do this.<\/p>\n
So this morning, when my husband and I agreed it was time to get out from under the pile of blankets, he went off to get dressed and start coffee, and I sat in bed with my notebook and wrote.\u00c2\u00a0 It took about 15 minutes and it was very easy to get 3 pages worth written.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still not sure if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 3 pages front and back, or 3 sides of pages \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen contradictions on what is really expected.\u00c2\u00a0 At this point, I feel like if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m writing 3 sides of pages each morning that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better than nothing.<\/p>\n
My hope is if I keep this up, and try to make it a habit, then when sitting down to write a few nights a week I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have an easier time sinking into my creative mode, even when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m exhausted from a 9+ hour workday.\u00c2\u00a0 In the past, I scoffed at the thought of Morning Pages, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why that is.\u00c2\u00a0 Journaling in high school likely helped keep me somewhat grounded.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe this will be a good thing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be sure to update.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curious how many others have ventured into completing Morning Pages.\u00c2\u00a0 Have you stuck with it and did it help your overall creative process?\u00c2\u00a0 Have you found another process that works better?\u00c2\u00a0 Feel free to comment and share below.<\/p>\n
Happy Writing,
\n-Heather<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Originally posted on Spare Time Writer dot Com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In high school I carried a spiral notebook everywhere I went, recording everything that went on during the day.\u00c2\u00a0 Long before Twitter and Facebook, my notebook was my social media of the 1980\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stwposts","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.girlnovember.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}