morning pages – Travel stories

(Close-up detail of a rusty gate)

Back in 2001 I read the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a creativity workbook with exercises to do and questions to answer. Highly recommended. One of the exercises is called Morning Pages. It works like this, you keep an A4 copybook by your bedside and when you awake in the morning you pick up your copy and write three pages. You write every thought that comes into your head and when there’s nothing in your head you write “I can’t think of anything to write”, until, like magic another thought comes along. You do this every day.

(Close-up of a rock with old Irish carvings)

I’m working on a new project and as part of it I gathered up those copy books and have just started to read them. For the first six weeks of writing you are not supposed to read any of your words. I think it’s because until you have a habit going you’ll give up if you see what rubbish you’re producing! It’s not really rubbish, just mixed up and out of sync and hopping from one topic to the other. I did read mine at six weeks but never felt the need again, so it’s mainly new to me.

(Close-up of a spider’s web)

What I am finding amazing is the little things. How tired I was. How I missed my husband when he went away to Japan for a week. How I worried about everything, everything. How pleased I was when I learn something new. How much I wanted to help others and how guilty I felt when I couldn’t. How much I loved to write each morning. How important making the sandwiches the night before was, to the smooth running of a life with school children. How everything I worried about worked out fine in the end.

The little things that make up a life, Mairead.

(Come on in….)

A long time ago I read the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. In it, there’s an exercise called Morning Pages. The idea is that every morning before you do anything else, you take our your A4 pad and your pen and write without stopping for three pages. What do you write? The first thing that comes into your head and if nothing does, you write “nothing is coming into my head” and usually that’s all it takes for something to come into your head!

(Patterns)

I think the rational for this exercise is two-fold. One, it’s practice at writing and two, it clears all the thinking stuff out of your head and onto the page. When the thinking stuff is gone, then there’s space for the good stuff. The good stuff is wise and helpful and intuitive. The kind of stuff that gets buried under the worry and trouble and problems. The whole process is a bit like weeding a vegetable patch so that your crops can grow.

(Pink geraniums)

I wrote my Morning Pages for at least eighteen months. Clearing the thinking stuff was very useful and of course I enjoyed the writing. But the added bonus was the structure and discipline of daily practice. Practice makes Perfect. In order to become good at something we need practice. That includes being calm or staying grounded or accepting ourselves or living a less is more kind of life or whatever it is that floats your boat! We need to practice…. daily.

(More patterns)

Practice, practice, practice, Mairead.