morning pages

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​To restore your creativity, you must first find it. I propose to do this with the help of a seemingly completely useless activity that I call the morning pages. You will refer to this session every day throughout the course and hopefully long after. I have been doing this myself for ten years. Some of my students, whose experience is not much less than mine, would rather stop breathing than read the morning pages.

Ginny, a screenwriter and producer, credits them with inspiring her latest scripts and keeping her TV programs clean and crisp. “I even treat them with some superstition now,” she says. “Sometimes you have to get up at five in the morning to write them before you go to work.”

What are morning pages? In the most general form, they can be defined as a stream of consciousness scribbled on three sheets of handwritten text: “Oh, here it is morning again … There is absolutely nothing to write about. It would be nice to wash the curtains. Did I take clothes out of the washer yesterday? La-la-la…” More down to earth, they can be called «sewage for the brain», because this is precisely their direct purpose.

The morning pages just can’t be wrong or bad. This daily morning paperwork should have nothing to do with art. And even with writing a competent text. I emphasize this for non-writers using my book. Such «scribbling» is simply a means, a tool. Nothing more is required of you — just run your hand over the paper and write down everything that comes to mind. And don’t be afraid to say something too stupid, pathetic, pointless, or weird—anything will work.

Morning pages don’t have to be smart at all, though sometimes they do. But, most likely, this will not happen, which no one will ever know — except you. No one else is allowed to read them, and neither should you, at least for the first two months. Just scribble three pages and place the sheets in an envelope. Or turn the page in a notebook and do not look at the previous ones. Just write three pages… And three more the next morning.

… September 30, 1991 Dominique and I went to the river for the weekend to catch bugs for her biology work. They collected caterpillars and butterflies. I made the scarlet net myself, and it turned out pretty well, only the dragonflies were so agile that they almost brought us to tears. And we also saw a tarantula spider, which peacefully walked along the pound road not far from our house, but we did not dare to catch it …

Sometimes the morning pages contain colorful descriptions, but more often they are full of negativity, as if glued together out of self-pity, repetition, pomposity, childishness, spite or monotonous nonsense, or even outright stupidity. That’s wonderful!

… October 2, 1991 When I woke up, I had a headache, I took aspirin, and now I feel better, although I still feel chilly. I think I did catch the flu. Almost all things are already unpacked, and Laura’s teapot, which I missed madly, was never found. What a pity…

All this nonsense that you write down in the morning, consisting of anger and despondency, is what prevents you from creating. Worries about work, dirty laundry, a dent in a car, a strange look from a loved one — all this swirls somewhere at the subconscious level and spoils the mood all day long. Get it all out on paper.

Morning pages are the main method of creative revival. Like all artists experiencing a period of creative stagnation, we tend to criticize ourselves ruthlessly. Even if the whole world thinks that we are quite wealthy creatively, we still believe that we do not create enough, and this is no good. We become a victim of our own internal mischief-pedant, who strives for perfection in everything, our eternal critic, the Censor, who has settled in the head (more precisely, in the left hemisphere) and grumbles, now and then releasing snide remarks that look like the truth. This Censor keeps telling us amazing things: “Hm, is this what we call a text? What is this, a joke? Yes, you can’t even put a comma where you need to. If you haven’t done anything like this before, you can’t hope that it will ever work out. At you here the error on an error and an error drives. What makes you think that you have even a drop of talent? And everything like that.

Zau.e.te yourself on your nose: the negative opinion of your Censor is not true. You won’t be able to learn it right away, but as you crawl out of bed in the morning and immediately sit down in front of a blank page, you learn to avoid it. Precisely because it is simply impossible to write the morning pages wrong, you have every right not to listen to this wretched Censor at all. Let him grumble and swear as much as he likes. (And he won’t stop talking.) Keep moving your hand across the page. If you want, you can even record his chatter. Pay attention to how bloodthirsty he aims at the most vulnerable spot of your creativity. And make no mistake: the Censor is on your heels, and he is a very cunning enemy. When you get smarter, he gets smarter. Have you written a good play? The censor will surely announce to you that there is nothing more to hope for. Did you draw your first sketch? “Not Picasso,” he will say.

Think of this Censor as a caricatured Serpent slithering through your creative Eden and whispering nasty things to confuse you. If the Serpent doesn’t suit you, choose someone else, like the shark from the movie Jaws, and cross it out. Hang this picture where you usually write, or put it in a notepad. Just by portraying the Censor as a mischievous little cartoon rogue and thereby putting him in his place, you are gradually depriving him of power over you and your creativity.

More than one of my students has hung up — like an image of the Censor — an unflattering photograph of his own parent — the one to whom he owes the appearance of a caustic critic in his mind. So, the task is not to perceive the attacks of a malicious character as the voice of reason and learn to see in him only a broken compass that can lead you to a creative dead end.

The morning pages are non-negotiable. Never skip or cut the number of morning pages. Your mood doesn’t matter. The nasty things you hear from the Censor are also not important. There is a misconception that you need to be in a certain mood to write. This is not true. Often the best works of art are born precisely on those days when you think that everything you do is complete nonsense. The morning pages will stop you from judging yourself and allow you to just write. So what if you are tired, irritated, depressed and unable to concentrate? Your inner artist is a baby that needs to be fed. The morning pages are his food, so go for it.

Three pages of whatever comes into your head — that’s all that is required of you. If nothing comes up, write down: «Nothing comes to mind.» Keep doing this until you have completed all three pages. Do whatever you want until you complete all three.

When people ask me, «Why write these morning pages?» — I laugh it off: «To get into the other world.» But in every joke there is only a fraction of a joke. The morning pages really take us «to the other side» — fear, pessimism, mood swings. And most importantly, they take us to a place where the Censor can no longer reach us. Precisely where his chatter is no longer heard, we find silent solitude and can listen to that barely perceptible voice that belongs to both our Creator and ourselves.

It is worth mentioning logical and figurative thinking. Logical thinking is the choice of the Western Hemisphere of the Earth. It operates with concepts, clearly and consistently. A horse in such a rational system is a certain combination of animal parts. The autumn forest is seen as a set of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, golden.

Imaginative thinking is our inventor, our child, our own absent-minded professor. He will probably exclaim: “Wow! That’s lovely!». He compares the completely incomparable (a boat equals a wave plus a tramp). He likes to liken a speeding car to a wild animal: «The gray wolf flew out of the yard with a howl.»

Figurative thinking captures the whole picture. It is receptive to patterns and shades. Looking at the autumn forest, it exclaims: “Wow! A bouquet of leaves! How beautiful! Gilding — shimmering — like the skin of the earth — royal — carpet! It is full of associations and uninhibited. It connects the images in a new way to convey the meaning of the phenomena, as the ancient Scandinavians did, calling the boat «sea horse». Skywalker, the Skywalker in Star Wars, is a wonderful reflection of imaginative thinking.

Why all this chatter about logical thinking and figurative thinking? And besides, the morning pages teach logical thinking to retreat and give the opportunity for figurative frolic.

You may find it beneficial to think of this activity as meditation. Of course, these are different things. Also, you may not be used to meditation at all. The pages will seem to someone far from spirituality and tranquility — rather, they have a lot of petty and negative in their mood. And yet they do represent a form of meditation that deepens our understanding of ourselves and helps change lives.

And one more thing: the morning pages are suitable for painters, sculptors, poets, actors, lawyers and housewives. For everyone who wants to try their hand at creativity. Don’t think this is just for writers. Lawyers who have begun using this method swear that they have become more successful in court. Dancers say that now it is easier for them to maintain balance — and not only mentally. By the way, it is writers who cannot get rid of the regrettable desire to write morning pages, instead of simply and thoughtlessly moving their hand over paper, who find it most difficult to feel their benefit. Rather, they will feel that their other texts are becoming much freer, wider in scope and easier to be born. In short, whatever you do or want to do, the Morning Pages are for you.