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Anyone who has read 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron (excellent book btw) will know about the concept of morning pages - every morning, the first thing you do is write three pages, stream of consciousness, without pausing. It can be about anything at all, even if it's just "I don't know what to write" a hundred times over. The point is to become honest with yourself about the things that are running through your head, and it has a very cleansing effect on your mind, and enhances your creativity. I must say, whenever I have done morning pages regularly, I have felt a lot better. Writing about my worries helps me overcome them easier, and I become more clear about what I need to do with my life. I just recently did a session for an issue that was causing me a lot of anxiety and now that I have written I am in a completely different frame of mind about it. I feel lighter, and everything is clearer. Unfortunately I found it challenging to keep up with writing morning pages. But I recently found a website which motivated me to start again. It's called 750 words, and the point is to write 750 words a day. Julia Cameron says that morning pages should be written in the morning, and in longhand, but honestly I think it can be just as effective when typed on a computer. I even think that writing during the evening could be just as helpful, in order to process the day before going to sleep. The website has some pretty cool features too - an analysis system which lets you know how you are emotionally, on average, and how you view the world (e.g. do you write more about past, present or future, what topics do you write about most, are you negative or positive, etc). There's even a metadata system where you can enter statistics and view a graph over time. I have decided to graph how happy I am on a scale of 1 to 10, and the percentage of time I have spent in the Vortex the past 24 hours. Should be interesting to see what I find after a month or so! Anyway, this post was not to plug 750 words - although I do think it's so awesome that I wanted to share it with my fellow IQers, because I think it could be very useful for LOA work. But mostly I wanted to bring up the topic of morning pages, see if anyone else has done it, and hopefully inspire a few people to try out this ridiculously simple but effective technique! Writing morning pages does make a huge difference, in my experience.
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I do the morning pages for 2 years now. The attitude has removed my writer's block that I have been suffering from for a quite long time. I cannot see any use in doing these pages on a pc as the intimacy of thought, feeling and stream go together with longhand. The Surplus: After 1 year I can read what I write and started to pay more attention to what I do there. As I give a title to every morning work I get hold of the daily topic. Some topics repeat even in a very sophisticated way and I got the possibility to make some short (or even longer) stories of them by dictating it into the machine, editing it afterwards. Sometimes I go for a scan and try to check which words are "fashion" with me and try to replace them with a good thesaurus. After a while it doesn't matter if it is 3 or 4 pages. Flow is flow and time is time. So the power is lasting for one hour minimum and that's okay. I do not want to miss this work. And, yes, it is happening in the morning, but no worries: you are allowed to write in the evening watching what is coming out of you. It is all depending on what you carry on inside you. And I am very glad for the intimacy of the long had that is bringing more up from the inside. For example I like to write about taboos and things that are politically not correct at all. But it is in my brain and the ape inside wants to get it out. Good if only I can read my own long hand and can get some relief with it. After I am fine again- like here- and do not have to insult anybody. Thank you for the question. 1
Everyone is different I suppose. I get the point of why longhand would be good, but I type a lot faster and I find it helps me be more honest because I type out my thoughts immediately as they come - with longhand, I have time to 'correct' myself and think before writing, which for me defeats the purpose of stream of consciousness. However if I was doing Morning Pages for creative purposes e.g. brainstorming, I would consider longhand because I write better then.Right now it's all about purging.
(20 Feb '12, 08:24)
cassiopeia
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couldn't figure out how to sign in. Tried 3 times. I an not going to use facebook. It look like it would some. I can't say but for me a pain.
You use your gmail or facebook account to sign get an account, I used gmail. It's a really good website, but there is always the option of pen + notebook for those who want to try out Morning Pages but don't want to do it online :)
@cassiopeia Just wanted to let you know that this is fantastic. When I use it regularly I really get clear about all sorts of things. It is absolutely brilliant. I also find I type faster than I write so I can really get a good speed up with this system. Thanks so much for posting it - highly recommended.