012: The Morning Pages Experiment

Morning pages is a concept from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. In the book, she describes morning pages as a tool to help in creative recovery and work through creative blocks. I share the results of my experiment in which I did three pages of journaling each morning for three weeks.

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The Morning Pages Experiment

Hi friend, this episode is all about morning pages. And if you're not familiar with that term, it comes from The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. It's a very famous book. It's the full title of it is the artists way a spiritual path to higher creativity. And it was written in the 90s. And the idea behind the book, it's really about creative recovery. So it talks about building up your self confidence, building up your skills around kind of harnessing your creative abilities, whether that's creative writing, creating art, any sort of creative outlet that someone might have. And one of the tools that she talks about in that book is the practice of morning pages. So I did an experiment, where I did morning pages, for three weeks for 21 days, to see how it would affect my life, how it would affect my writing my creative process, my mindset, all of the things. So morning pages is a daily practice. And it's three pages of longhand writing. So meaning it's not on a computer, you're not typing, you're writing in a journal or notebook, three pages with a pen, and it's stream of consciousness. So it's kind of like journaling in that you're not censoring yourself, you're not judging what you're writing, you're not going back and polishing it, you're just dumping onto the page, right? Letting whatever come out. It's about anything that comes into your head at that moment when you're writing.

The other important thing about morning pages is that they're for you, only no one else is going to see these, no one else will ever have access to this, it's just for you. And the reason that's important is I don't know about you, but when I know someone's going to read something, I put a lot more thought and intention into it. And I look at it through a much more critical lens. And it's important that you not do that with morning pages, because then you might censor yourself, you might not really be honest in your writing, you might judge what's coming out what's being put on the page. And that's, that defeats the whole purpose of morning pages. It's just stream of consciousness brain dumping onto the page. And it's really something it's something that's easy to think that you're doing wrong, it's easy to overthink it. I certainly got into that trap. When I first started, I was like, I don't know if I'm doing this right. But those are the only instructions, three pages longhand stream of consciousness, no one reads it. That's it.

And they they're called morning pages, because ideally, you would do these, you know, first thing in the morning or as part of your morning routine, but they can be done any time. And there were a couple of days in the three weeks where I did them in the afternoon, once I even did them at night because I forgot to do them in the morning. So if you're not a morning person, or you wake up late, you can still do this practice. So you just do it at any point in your day. So my experiment, I had originally planned to do 30 days to do a full month. But I started this at the beginning of December, and December. With the holidays. It's just not a good day to do a full, straight 30 Day experiment. It was kind of silly of me to do that experiment to start it when I did. So I just did three weeks because I knew I was traveling over the holidays, I knew my schedule was going to be off. And it probably it would have put a lot of pressure on me to have to do three pages of writing every morning when I was traveling. And when I was with my husband's family for Christmas like it just would have been too much. So that's why I shortened it down to three weeks. I used a notebook that I got earlier this year where I had just jotted down some notes about online courses I was taking or business or whatever so I didn't have a designated notebook for it. And that's actually one thing I wish I would have done.

I love a new notebook. I love a new journal, it is so exciting to me. It's so motivating to me. So that is one thing I would recommend, if you can is to set just get yourself a new notebook for this practice. So how I did my morning pages is I would wake up, take bill, my dog for a walk, come back, get some, get a latte, get some espresso, some caffeine in my system. And try to do it early before I would eat before I would get ready, anything like that. And I would sit on the couch in my living room and do it. And initially, maybe the first four or five days I set a timer for myself, I set a 15 minute timer because I wanted to just get the pages out quickly. And I thought setting a timer would help me feel motivated. And kind of treat it like a writing sprint, which didn't, it didn't really work to have the timer. So I scrapped that after like day by day five, maybe. But what I found is it took me a while to do three pages. Some days, it would take me close to 30 minutes. Because I just couldn't focus. It was really eye opening for me to see how easily distractible I was. Looking back, I should have done this, I should have just shut myself in my office or in the bedroom or something where there weren't other distractions. But yeah, it would take me a while I would do one page and then I would get distracted by something that I'd come back and finish and then do the second page. And then I would go get more coffee and come back and do the third page. So yeah, sometimes it was close to 30 minutes, by the time I actually got three pages out.

Another thing I discovered is that I was writing a lot of the same things every single day. Which sounds like a negative, but it actually was a good thing that I realized that that I was able to look at that and say, Okay, wow, I really don't have a lot of original thoughts. I tend to think about the same things over and over and over again on multiple days. And I knew that I knew that my thoughts were sort of, I would think the same, like 10 thoughts over and over and over again. And I would be worried about the same things every single day. But seeing it on paper was kind of striking. A lot of days, I would write about the same stuff, I'd be worried about the same things. So that was very eye opening. It also got me to process how I was feeling about what was happening about the things that I was worried about and sort of work through them a little bit and process them on the page. So that was that was great. I think that was very helpful.

There's a lot of stuff that came up for me in December, just in my personal life. And it was good to sort of process all of that stuff on paper. So those are all the positives, right? It was good to process, it helped me realize how many of my thoughts are just on repeat. And I think it also helped me feel more grounded. In the morning, it was a good part of my morning routine. Now for the negatives. It I didn't write much. During the three weeks, I was doing my morning pages creatively I didn't I didn't work on my mind work in progress very much. And going into this, I had assumed that, okay, once I brain dumped all of my thoughts onto the page onto the page, then it would, it would clear up mental space for me and I would be able to write more effectively because I wasn't focused on all the other stuff that was rattling around in my brain. And it didn't quite work like that for me. After I got done with my three pages. I felt like I had already written three pages in my work in progress. I felt energetically a little bit kind of drained. And it was hard for me to then shift gears and go to my computer and write on my work in progress. Now, that could have just been because December was kind of a tough month I had a lot going on. So I don't know if I would have written more Anyways, if I hadn't been doing the morning pages. But it was interesting to see.

I wondered after completing the three weeks I wondered if doing a morning pages activity or exercise on the computer would have had a different effect. Like if I would have just written three pages, or even a page on the computer, if that would have changed things. There's a site online that I'm familiar with I've never used, but it's called 750 words. And the idea is you just brain dump and you write 750 words in the morning. And because 750 words is roughly the equivalent of three pages, and I wonder if doing that would have helped me shift gears more easily into writing on my work in progress. I don't know. Maybe I'll try that experiment at some point. So morning pages was doing this experiment was beneficial to me, but not in the way that I expected. I think it was more beneficial for my mindset, and to help me process what was going on in my life. But it didn't really have the effect that I was hoping for, on me creativity. If you're someone who struggles with writer's block, and just you feel completely cut off from your creativity completely creatively blocked, I think morning pages could be a good exercise to get you back into the practice of getting words down on a page, even if they're not creative words, even if they're not, you're not writing fiction.

Just getting back into that habit, that muscle memory of getting words on the page could be super beneficial. So I understand the thought process behind this exercise. And I think it could be incredibly helpful for people. I just don't think it was quite what I needed right now at this point in my life. And at this point in my writing. I might try this again, at some point. Maybe later this year, I'll do another experiment and try the 750 words where I write on the computer, and then shift gears to my writing and see if that has an impact. I think that would be an interesting follow up experiment to do. You know, that could certainly change things that might have just been I'm not good with writing longhand. I don't know. So I hope this isn't discouraging. If you are someone who loves morning pages and loves The Artist’s Way and you're like, how dare Katie say this, I can't believe she's, she's like speaking negatively about the experience. But I just want to be honest. And if you're thinking about doing this, if you're not familiar with with morning pages, but you're like, Oh, I kind of want to try that. I hope this doesn't discourage you. I'm still super happy that I did this experiment. Like I said, it was really helpful for my mindset, and to process some things and to help me work through them. So I got a lot of benefit out of it. And everyone's different.

Please try this experiment. Try doing it for a week. Even if if three weeks is too long. Try it for a week and see if it has an impact. I think you could still get a lot of benefit out of this even doing it for a week. So alright, that is the morning pages experiment. If I do a follow up experiment, I will certainly let you all know and do some content around it and do a follow up episode to test out my hypothesis that it would be more effective if I did it on the computer. We'll see. Stay tuned for that.

Katie Wolf