The joy of writing for yourself is an act of delight and satisfaction to many people. Being able to express yourself to yourself is a different sense of fulfillment. Morning pages have emerged as a novel way to involve in this form of writing. Not only does it help you keep in touch with writing, but it also serves a much more obscure yet powerful purpose. This shall be brought to light as you read through this article.
What Are Morning Pages
Let us begin by trying to understand what morning pages are.
These are 3 pages of freehand writing done early in the morning. The pages are generally around the standard A4 or letterhead in terms of size, and they need absolutely no format or adherence to writing rules. They are the writing equivalents of the vocal warmups that journalists do or the vocal range from tremolo to alto that singers try out before they perform.
Some people use their diaries to write three pages.
The basic principle behind writing morning pages is that morning is the time when your mind is free of all sorts of ideas – good and evil. This allows you to pen thoughts without inhibition. It does not need to be coherent even to yourself. However, it just needs to be a habit.
Many writers take ideas from the content that comes out of the morning pages. Many famous authors such as Oliver Burkeman, Janet Burroway, among others, have vouched for this method directly or through variations of it. However, the credit for creating this method of writing is given to famous American author Julia Cameron. She first described this form of penning ideas in her book “The artist’s way.”
What Are the Benefits of Morning Pages
Now that we know the basic idea behind writing morning pages let us acquaint ourselves with the benefits of writing morning pages religiously.
1. Morning Pages Help Clear the Clutter in Your Mind
Morning pages are that unloading platform for all the thoughts that have accumulated over the past night or maybe even a few days. They sometimes bring out repressed ideas or may even form new ones as your hand carves ink onto the paper. This outlet helps to calm your mind and enter the new day with a fresh perspective.
2. Morning Pages Are the Best Way to End a Writer’s Block
Constantly conjuring words will eventually break that dreaded wall that most writers have faced—writer’s block. As time progresses, it prevents this block from even existing.
In addition to this, it prevents another impediment that writers face in the process to unlock their Pandora’s box of ideas – self-doubt.
Being in touch with writing in the form of morning pages helps you know your limits and exceed them while also understanding their extent. It helps you not to overwork yourself while acting as the starting point to a creative journey.
3. Morning Pages Helps You Realize the Potential That You Never Knew You Had
A clear mind that awakens to the first ray of the sun is capable of coming up with things that you cannot fathom.
Regularly engaging yourself with morning pages helps you to tap into this goldmine that has been hidden deep within the crevices of your mind. This will now lead to the motivation you look for to write more and more content, hence making the process a memorable one. This cycle, once started, can move only in one direction. Forwards towards prosperity.
Any regular writer who engages in this can vouch for those moments of awe that they have lived through.
4. Morning Pages Act as an Outlet for Your Emotions
Whether the emotion is a pleasurable or a miserable one, writing morning pages helps you create a conduit to form an outlet for these emotions. They can help your mind eliminate the heavy burden of any anger, sadness, fear, or anxiety. While doing this, morning pages also help enhance the pleasure of a joyful event, a moment of success, or any other instance of sheer glee.
7 Best Ways to Begin Writing Morning Pages
Now that you are aware of the benefits of engaging in writing morning pages, here are a few suggestions on how to go about the process.
1. Always Take This Process One Day at a Time
The most common mistake that beginners make is that they plan way too far ahead. This naturally makes writing morning pages a stressful process and defeating the very purpose it is meant to serve. In order to avoid this, take this one day at a time. Let the scribbles and thought processes of day one remain limited to day one and not jump over to day two or further. This is the first major leap to reaping the benefits of this beautiful method.
2. Prepare Mentally and Physically to Make Time to Write Three Morning Pages
The laziness of a chilly early morning is the worst enemy to initiate a new task. A strong will and determination are of paramount importance to achieve this goal. Keep a few alarms to wake you up from the comforts of your duvet.
Having it engraved in your mind that this task awaits you the following morning helps wake up to a fresh mind.
If you find it a tedious task to prepare for it in the morning, prepare for this at night. The ideal time would be just before you go to bed, maybe the last thing you do to close the day. This will help you to be regular at writing daily.
3. Maintain Positivity in the Initial Days
It is a human tendency to repeat activities that one associates with beneficial results or pleasurable emotions. Begin writing morning pages with ideas or topics that make you happy or keep you motivated. This will attract you to write the next day again, and so on. Try to avoid writing about any topic that induces anxiety in you. This form of outlet writing can come in the future. The beginning of this process is not the best time to engage in such ideas.
4. Make Sure to Keep It up No Matter What Comes
Writing morning pages is not a one-day event; neither is it a cathartic form of writing that makes a guest appearance occasionally. Penning morning pages is a dynamic process that keeps evolving as the days progress.
The key to it is to maintain consistency.
It must be done every single day without fail. It must be immune to your mood changes and morning blues. Attempt it without any desire for a reward. Besides, this should be the first thing you do in the morning.
5. Do Not Attempt to Start It on a Computer or Any Electronic Device
The feel of writing comes when the nib of the pen scratches against the rough surface of a paper is beyond any description. Using longhand as the form of writing gives you enough time to process your ideas and maybe tweak them if you absolutely feel the need to do so. Apart from this, using a pen and paper to write does not let the thought process and the speed of writing go together. It will end up slowing down the speed at which you think and hence prevent you from deviating too far from what you have begun to write.
6. Use Prompts to Break the Initial Sluggishness
There are moments when it is impossible to write about anything. Everything seems either vague, redundant, or sometimes you just cannot conjure up any content. When you face yourself in such a situation, there are many websites that provide daily prompts for people to write about. You could use these to break the initial inertia, making you quit it in the initial stages. Eventually, your mind will play the role of a prompt storehouse.
Note that no matter what, you must always fill up all three pages. Sly escapes are going to halt the progress of no one apart from you.
7. Emphasize on the Fact That Rules Do Not Exist
Morning pages may be the birthplace of the next big bestseller, but it itself is not one. These pages capture unfiltered, unedited, and sometimes, unfound ideas. There is no reason to be pedantic about the strict rules of the English language, nor is it meant to satisfy anyone, including yourself. It is as good as a reflex action of a thought that just jolts down to your hand and eventually to a piece of paper. Rules can fly to the nether lands during this time.
Have You Started?
Now that the perks and privileges of writing morning pages are shining as brilliantly as the sunlight of daybreak, have you mustered the will to let ideas flow freely from the corners of your mind onto the