Craft of Writing: Praise of Morning Pages.

Hello, friends!

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I have had a wild week that got in the way of just about everything I had planned to do. Migraines that last 24+ hours don't help much on top of being super busy with the duties of being a parent. On the plus side of the ledger, however, I have my morning pages. I devote a half hour every morning to working on them. I fell into this habit as I was working through The Artist's Way, for the second time, last summer. At first, it felt foolish and like I was wasting time. Now, however, it is something I wouldn't trade for anything.

What are the morning pages? Well, they're three pages of writing that is essentially a brain dump first thing in the morning. I've come to equate it with mental and writerly yoga. It's an exercise that helps warm me up for the day and I almost always come away from it feeling like I've done something good for me. In the past, this function was filled by my daily journal. I'm finding that my daily journal is more of a record of how my day has been where as my morning pages are completely random and comprised of what ever is running through my head that morning.

I started out with the focus of writing about my writing habits. Somewhere around September, I drifted away from that focus and it turned into something closer to what Ms. Cameron was indicating they often turn out to be. It is a habit that is not entirely easy. I find there are days that it is easier to write and days where I just want to throw the notebook in the trash and forget it all. Still, I do my writing because if I don't do it I find I feel off kilter for the rest of the day.

It is both an exercise in discipline and a warm up exercise for writing that day. As odd as it seemed, I have found that some warm up for my writing sessions is actually really helpful. I had thought that this was just a thing that musicians and athletes did to prevent injury during performance. Now, I find myself thinking that it is a mental thing that helps prime the proverbial pump for performance.

I highly recommend spending time, even if it is just ten minutes, doing some free writing before working on a project. It helps me get into the mental groove that I work best in. It may prove helpful for you. I hope you have a wonderful week.

♥