Day 12 of the 30 Day Writing Experiment If you’re a writer, it’s pretty likely you’ve heard of Julia Cameron and her ‘Morning Pages. Cameron, herself a writer, has written a whole slough of books on the practice and the art of writing. Her most famous book, entitled ‘The Artist’s Way – A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity’ is a manifesto on the power of the creative spirit that resides within each one of us – not just those who consider themselves ‘artists’ or ‘painters’ or ‘dancers’ or ‘writers’ – and a call for us all to nurture that creative nature that is our birthwrite. (Ah! Just noticed this typo now in a quick re-reading. Thats brilliant!) In it, one of the exercises she prescribes is called ‘Morning Pages’ (as I’m typing this, I realize it’s time for a refresher on ‘The Elements of Style’ – over the years, I’ve adopted my own style of punctuation, and use of quotation marks, and other little idiosyncracies. Which, If I think about it, speaks to my own sense of creativity and style – perhaps I don’t need a refresher after all. I mean, look at Miriam Toews and ‘A Complicated Kindness’, without so much as a period or a comma in the entire book. Or am I remembering that wrong? Maybe there are periods, but it seems to me that one of the outstanding bits about that book (besides the terrific writing) was the conscious choice to forgo punctuation altogether. Ah well, it’s been 10 years since I read it (gasp!) I guess I can’t be expected to remember everything!) Anyway, I digress. Morning Pages are an exercise whereby, first thing every morning, you put pen to paper and write three full pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing. Whatever comes to mind is what you put down on paper, in whatever form it comes out – punctuation or no, sentence fragments are fine, and there really are no rules. The only stipulations are that it be a full three pages in length, is ideally written in longhand, and that it is complete stream of consciousness. The gist of the idea behind this exercise is that it clears the mind of all the dross that tends to float around in there, clogging up the arteries of thought, like too much cholesterol. (Not that I believe the conventional theories of cholesterol, but don’t get me started on that!) And once the mind becomes clear, it become free to be creative. No more mental shopping lists cluttering up the neocortex. Getting rid of the ‘I’m not good enoughs’ and ‘I can’t do its’, letting them flow out onto the page and out of your mind, takes away those mental blockages that have been stopping you from stepping out and doing that thing that you want to do. Putting your dreams down on paper helps with that too. I took to Julia’s program with a passion in the late nineties (I guess it was) and even went so far as attending a day-long seminar with her at the Learning Annex in Toronto, actually getting the chance to chat with her and thank her for the impact of her work in person (a desire I had placed on my vision board several months before – but again, that’s another story). I had so much fun working my way through the book, and somewhere - I think - I still have binders full of Morning Pages, many of which contained the seeds of much of what my life has become today. Hmm, might be fun to go back and have a look at those. On second though, maybe not. I find the present moment is always so much juicier than the past, so why not go with that, and create some new morning pages now? Funnily enough it wasn’t until this morning that I realized that what I’ve been doing these last couple of weeks really is a form of Morning Pages in that these have been, for the most part, completely uncensored and mostly stream of consciousness as well. Perhaps they’re a bit more structured than the morning pages, but it’s interesting to note that as I have allowed this writing to flow out onto the page (here using a computer rather than a pen and loose pages) the flow of creative thought in my own life has certainly increased. I’m definitely getting new ideas, thinking about old situations in new ways, and allowing a whole new stream of creative consciousness into my life, and that’s a thought I like a lot!
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 11:05:24 +0000
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