On Morning Pages and Writing Daily

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I recently started my 16th morning-pages notebook. I’ve been doing morning pages more or less regularly since the end of 2020. Most days, I sit at some point in the morning and write three pages with my beloved fountain pen (which I received as a gift for my birthday in 2021).

Now, the morning pages are not like other writing. Julia Cameron says it explicitly in the book (she says writers are the worst because they try to write the morning pages instead of just doing them). I talked a bit before about the difference between writing in private and writing for public consumption (even if it’s only for a handful of friends and family, like this blog). My morning pages mainly focus on what’s for dinner tonight and what I have to do today. However, I always list three good things that happened the previous day, describe a specific situation or place (to practice descriptions), and write things I’m grateful for at the end of each session.  Almost none of what I write in the morning pages ever makes its way into anything I publish. It’s a place where I think “out loud”--on the page. 

Still, it is an act of putting words on the page: an act of writing. Starting my 16th notebook got me a tad sentimental, so I did a little sample word counting. Each notebook is about 50,000 words (an average of 200 pages and 250 words per page). That means that in my previous fifteen notebooks, I’ve written 750,000 words. Three-quarters of a million. Words. 

I usually resist the morning pages. When I sit down, I often (at least twice a week) feel lethargic, and I want to finish doing the pages and get going with my day. I contemplate stopping them altogether about every month. So why don’t I? 

Because I learned they work. I’ve come such a long way in the last few years since I’ve been doing the morning pages. I look at my writing differently, and I even get through the day more mindfully since I started. Sometimes, I realise something in the morning pages I haven’t realised before. But even when all I write is three pages of what’s for dinner and what the lady at the shop said yesterday, dumping all of this onto the notebook clears the way for other words. After I finish the morning pages, that’s when I start writing my stories or blog posts. 

I keep my morning pages notebooks in two boxes (for now) with the label: “evidence that I’m a writer”. It’s nice to be reminded of that every now and again.