How ‘Morning Pages’ Redefined My Creative Process
If you haven’t heard of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, it’s a book structured as a 12-week workshop for unblocking creatives who are blocked creatively.
It’s a wacky and wonderful adventure if you allow it to be. I’d like to take you on that journey with me.
Ruminations on The Artist’s Way
I’d never heard of this book before, but then my best friend asked if I would go through the exercise with her and not fully knowing what I was getting myself into, I said yes.
This couldn’t have come at a better time because I was in a “yes man” mindset at the time AND was severely creatively blocked for many reasons.
I’ve written about journaling in a previous post, but my thoughts on it have changed drastically since then.
While I don’t believe the Artist’s Way necessary “cures you”, I would say that it at the very least gets you in the right mindset and dare I say on the right path.
Not to sound too “woo woo”, but I genuinely feel it was a life-changing experience. Please don’t read that in the tone of a sensationalized TikTok hook statement.
I also feel you get out what you put in. The weekly workshops require A LOT of work. It’s really up to you how much of it you choose to do, but I suspect it’s directly correlated with the benefit you earn from it 😉.
Pre-Artist’s Way Journalling
Before beginning our Artist’s Way ✨journey✨, my journaling very much resembled that which I described in the previous post I did. Not saying it was necessarily bad, it just didn’t hit the level of depth I reached with the “Morning Pages” approach outlined in Cameron’s book.
I was looking for ways to find more humour in life, looking to show my appreciation for things, and to dump my stress somewhere. That was all great and a perfectly fine way to go about journaling.
It did serve the purpose of relieving some stress and I enjoyed the practice of picking out a sticker to use every day. It felt luxurious to use my nice notebooks and pens to journal with, but I often had a sense that I was missing something and not quite unlocking the greater potential with the journaling (which again, is okay – not everything is a competition or race).
My tendency was to write a couple of pages (they were not full letter-sized) and mostly recount the activities of my last day. I sometimes would try and write a joke or write about things I was grateful for, but I had a hard time making those stick. It was also a challenge to keep up the practice and to get through the session with my focus intact.
Overall, I don’t believe there’s one “Right Way” to journal. It really depends on what you’re looking to get out of the experience.
I’d say that more than showing me how to journal “Better”, the artist’s way showed me how to expand what you can use journalling for to break my mould for journaling.
Post-Artist’s Way Journaling
The Artist’s Way had us do “Morning Pages”. This involves writing 3 full pages every day no matter what, first thing in the morning.
At first, I REALLY struggled with this. I found it nearly impossible to maintain my focus for 3 pages and it would eat lengths of time out of my day. As the days got shorter around fall, I struggled to do this first thing in the morning because there was no light out and I didn’t want to wake up my cat with artificial light.
However, after sticking with it throughout the months of the workshop, I am now a proud member of the “morning pages” community.
When something exciting or of significance happens, I look forward to “immortalizing” it or dissecting it in my pages.
I write 3 letter-sized pages (single-sided) per day almost every day. I see the benefit of doing so because you can get out all the fluff in the first half like recounting the previous day’s miseries and triumphs, but then take the rest to dig deeper.
I’ll often brainstorm my creative ideas on my last page. I’ve been finding myself to be extra cynical recently and decided to take the last quarter of my 3rd page to reflect on the following things:
- List 3 things you value
- List 3 things you are grateful for
- List 1 thing that made you smile yesterday
- List 1 thing you did yesterday that contributes to the person you want to become
Unexpected Outcomes
When embarking on this quest, I knew I’d need a lot of paper to do the morning pages and found these old bound booklets we’d give to students for exam writing when I was a teaching assistant during my master’s.
My master’s was a traumatizing experience for my inner artist, so reclaiming these booklets felt like creative justice!
I learned to enjoy the act of writing regardless of the medium. The booklets were such an ugly medium compared to what I would journal in before, but it feels more raw this way sometimes and more about the contents of the writing itself than romanticizing the act of writing.
Because the morning pages force you to brutally write (do 3 pages no matter what), you come out with a massive body of work.
On a day-to-day basis, you can already feel a sense of accomplishment before really getting into your day. You have proof that you’re capable of getting this much work done in so little time (the workshop is 3 months if you follow it religiously).
Final Thoughts
I’m so grateful to my friend for showing me this book and taking me down this path. It has shaped not only how I approach journaling, but also my relationship with myself as an artist.
Creativity is not only for the writers and painters of the world. I work in tech as a techy and even find I need to be creative in my job sometimes. The artist’s way is meant to unblock ALL sorts of creativity.
We plan to start up another round of Artist’s Way next year and I can’t wait to see the delta from how it went this year.
Good luck to you if you decide to try it out. I’d love to hear your experiences.
Cheers!
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