Back in January I got the idea to do morning pages. I think from one of the habits I was developing on Coach.me. Unfortunately, I didn’t really take it to heart and never did them again.
Do you know what Morning pages are? For the first time I took a look at Julia Cameron’s website where she talks about Morning Pages. Below you can see her talking about them:
Julia Cameron is well known for her course, the Artists way. It is not one I have taken as I am a long way from being an artist. Much as I love the idea of becoming the next Picasso I think my efforts are better spent on other directions. But I like the idea of morning pages.
Today I did them properly for the first time – the last time I typed them. Apparently you are meant to fill 3 pages with handwriting. I believe it should be letter size. I did 2.5 pages of A4. It’s a cathartic experience. It is also meant to help free up your mind. Before trying them again I looked around for a few people who were talking about it. I found a blog post by Chris Winfield. At the time of writing it he has been doing them for 241 days. Unfortunately his blog is one of those annoying ones where you don’t get to know when he first wrote the post. I suspect it was a while back and I imagine he is still doing them.
He says that the impact of morning pages on his life have changed his life in a myriad of different ways. When I did them back in January it was structured, mainly because I wanted to publish it as a blog post. I certainly think that handwriting them is beneficial. Chris explained it by comparing writing by hand as driving slowly rather than fast. So most of us type faster than we write and so handwriting forces us to slow down. My handwriting remains terrible sadly, but the good side of that is no-one would be able to read what I wrote! Although that might be sad if anyone ever wants to write my biography!
So in my two and a half pages today I talked about all sorts of things. It was definitely interesting how much my mind rambled. I wrote about three or four different topics. I even found myself getting a bit teary. It is I suspect a bit like going off to see a psychiatrist who helps you get stuff off your chest. A friend of mine who went to go and see one said it was fantastic. They got to go and talk about themselves for an hour and the other person had to listen!
I suspect the benefit of Morning Pages may well be somewhat similar.
I am going to try and keep doing these on a daily basis at least for the next few weeks. It will be interesting to see whether I can see noticeable effects after some time of doing them.
Have you ever tried doing Morning Pages? If so how did they work for you. I would love to hear.
Time spent writing: 25 minutes.
Time From Starting Writing to Finishing: 40
Time Editing: 5 minutes
How Happy I am with Result: 5
