Aloud/Allowed
reflections on one year of the morning pages
One year ago today, I wrote my first morning pages.
I hadn’t even opened The Artist’s Way yet. All I knew was that I was feeling very lost and sad, that my best friend told me to order the book, that “the morning pages” were a big part of the book, that K had been doing morning pages for 6 years, and that all this practice required was 3 pages of stream of consciousness writing. Surely I could manage that.
I was eager, dare I say *pulled* towards the morning pages. But in truth, I had never been an adult to finish a notebook, let alone use one purposefully. I had a brief diary stint in middle school, and otherwise only “journaled” in times of deep, desperate what-the-fuckery. On occasion, I’d revisit said spirals and think, “Huh, I really had a breakthrough there.” But I never put two and two together and considered turning writing into a daily practice.
“Morning Pages I” was an unlined spiral-bound B5 from Muji. Only 5 pages (dating 3 months back) had been used (2 pages of gratitudes, a half-assed to-do list, a blank page, and a grocery list that indicates I was fighting off a yeast infection).
And so, on that very first day, my little neophyte ass flipped past said pages of shame, and proclaimed “DAY 1 OF FREEFORM THOUGHTS.” I started writing, which felt as weird as it did weirdly familiar. Like venting to a friend. A friend who was…myself…
It wasn’t long before I couldn’t stop writing. And soon enough it was my real friends who went out of their way to make sure I did my pages in the morning. One friend ripped out 3 pages of his own notebook to ensure I could write mine while on a cabin trip in Mississippi.
“Many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected,” Julia Cameron warned me.
It was hard to know if that was happening. But I was aware that when I didn’t do my pages, I found myself irritable, scattered and anxious. And when I did do them, I was far more present, empathetic, self-assured and grounded. It took me 8 months to finish The Artist’s Way. But even as I dragged out the weeks, I never abandoned the pages.
A quick (revised) excerpt from today:
Earlier this year, right after I entered my Saturn return and life turned upside fucking down, my friend H serendipitously invited me to a “journal open-mic night” she was hosting on her rooftop. It was synchronicity at its finest. For starters, I had recently/hellishly been tasked with re-reading my morning pages, so I was freshly re-acquainted with what suddenly became potential “material” for this gathering. I had also just taken myself an artist’s date to hear my friend C read her poetry, during which it dawned on me (as simple things often do on artist’s dates) that one could not only write a thing and read said thing to an audience (heh?!), but that I could see myself doing that. In fact, I found myself wanting that. “Cue the based brigade!” I thought.
“Oh you want to read aloud?” says your Saturn return.
“Guess you’re getting invited to do just that honey.”
It was a sweet bite in a sour month. And TBH, I was giddy. I knew I wanted to read some pages on the death and resurrection of Saturn Bar during/after Covid, pages that poured out of me while (rather appropriately) listening to Weyes Blood’s “In The Darkness Hearts Aglow” for the first time. Sure, Julia Cameron said don’t share your pages with anyone. But this felt different (as does this Substack post).
Maybe 20-25 people attended what can only be described as a Baroque feast of waxing. In most H-fashion, the roof had been adorned with fabric, pillows, candelabras, a paper mache heart. There was a tablescape full of wine and cheese and cake and tinned fish on silver platters. There were torn out clippings of The Devil Wears Prada taped to the walls. There was an Provincial armchair upholstered with orange velvet from which the reader would sit and share (as they felt so compelled).
And here I was, fresh in the, well… what-the-fuckery of my Saturn return, debating if I’d feel brave enough to share my homage to Saturn Bar, when the first reader to volunteer as tribute walks up to take their seat on the reading throne in none other than… a Saturn Bar t-shirt. I laughed at the sky and took that as a cue to go second. So up I went, down I sat, and off I read my silly little story from my silly little pages. And when I finished, I looked up and someone was crying. Someone who loved Saturn Bar as much as I did. And I just couldn’t believe I had gone from poetry viewer to reader to tear-jerker in the course of a week.
“Many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected,” she warned.
When I was done I scooched next to a friend, relieved to have my full attention on the other readers as they shared notes and lists and letters that will forever live anonymously in the sanctity of that early March rooftop.
• • •
Today continued:
“The more I do my morning pages, the less I care, the more I trust. In the honeymoon stage of the MP’s I went full-out and found myself whipping up stories about made-up witch-lands, detailing my best lore, writing for an invisible audience. This came naturally, but eventually started to feel tiresome. I soon realized I wasn’t obligated to detail, say, every trivial moment from my recent trip to California. I could write anything I fucking wanted.
Sometimes that looks cohesive, but more often it’s quite messy. Most often, I am not in the mood to do anything other than be a whiny ass bitch who gets to throw a tantrum on the page so it doesn’t seep into the rest of my day. Or at least seeps less.
It's always always always
a most necessary daily purging.
In its absence, I can feel my body tense up, I can hear my thoughts run amok.
It’s no wonder they didn’t want women to read or write. What a gift!”
While atop this soap box, I need to acknowledge that as a childless, self-employed person, I am rather privileged to be able to begin my days with the morning pages. It’s simply not tenable for everyone to begin their day with 30 minutes of stream of consciousness writing and I’m not here to say otherwise. But if you are interested, here’s what’s worked for me:
The notebook: I need to love my notebook. I need it to be consistent and clean and the same every time. Lined A5 is suggested. I use unlined A4 because I have tiny serial-killer handwriting :) Avoid spiral notebooks, they are distracting.
Pen of choice: MICRON 03 (I like them fresh so this is a bit of an expensive and slightly wasteful habit)
Recently, I’ve grown fond of distinguishing each notebook with stickers because WTF else do we use stickers for?
I no longer write with music
It doesn’t have to be morning for it to be the morning pages
That said, I am happiest when I write first thing in the morning after making my coffee
I am also happiest when I continue to write on the weekends
I’m not hard on myself if I don’t write on the weekends/vacation/during Mardi Gras/am on a deadline. Who cares
17 notebooks later, I can say that what the morning pages have taught me is the importance of process, especially in making sense of and moving *through* the hard shit that life is going to hand you. They have taught me that when life gives you lemons, write. When life gives you cinema, write. When the sun comes up and so do you, good morning bitch! It’s time to write. Feeling avoidant about starting a project? Write. Trying to make sense of a confusing situation? Write. Lonely? Write. Want to pull all your hair out and scream bloody murder at the top of your lungs and beat up a pillow? Write!!!!!!!
Seldom seldom SELDOM do I write my way through conflict without SHOCKING myself to at least *want* to understand the other side, or be honest about my role in things. And NEVER do I walk away from the Morning Pages feeling *worse* than I did before. That’s the real magic of the morning pages which, as it turns out, are a hell of a drug. I mean it when I say the pages are the most honest place I know. They always bring a degree of clarity. And clarity paves the way for peace. At least for a little while…
So on that note, happy/sad/turbulent/messy/clean/creative/furious writing. I’ll leave you with some wisdom straight from the gospel of Julia Cameron that I’ve learned to be true:
The morning pages are not supposed to sound smart—although sometimes they might. Most times they won’t, and nobody will ever know except you. Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages except you…Just write three pages…and write three more pages the next day.
Although occasionally colorful, the morning pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or bland—even silly sounding. Good!
All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover’s eye—this stuff eddies through our subconscious and muddies our days. Get it on the page.
The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly. Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never do enough and what we do isn’t right. We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth.
Make this a rule: always remember that your Censor’s negative opinions are not the truth. This takes practice. By spilling out of bed and straight onto the page every morning, you learn to evade the Censor…Make no mistake: the Censor is out to get you. It’s a cunning foe. Every time you get smarter, so does it. So you wrote one good play? The Censor tells you that’s all there is. So you drew your first sketch? The Censor says, “It’s not Picasso.”
Morning pages are nonnegotiable. Never skip or skimp on morning pages. Your mood doesn’t matter…We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don’t. Morning pages will teach you that your mood doesn’t really matter.
If you can’t think of anything to write, then write, “I can’t think of anything to write….” Do this until you have filled three pages. Do anything until you have filled three pages.
When people ask, “Why do we write morning pages?” I joke, “To get to the other side.” They think I am kidding, but I’m not. Morning pages do get us to the other side: the other side of our fear, of our negativity, of our moods. Above all, they get us beyond our Censor.
It is impossible to write morning pages for any extended period of time without coming into contact with an unexpected inner power. Although I used them for many years before I realized this, the pages are a pathway to a strong and clear sense of self . They are a trail that we follow into our own interior, where we meet both our own creativity and our creator.
The morning pages will work for painters, for sculptors, for poets, for actors, for lawyers, for housewives—for anyone who wants to try anything creative. Don’t think they are a tool for writers only. Hooey.
Nice Maddy! Isn’t fuckery the best word?