In her wildly popular and enduring book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Julia Cameron recommends two tools for creative people. The first tool is to hand write — without stopping — three pages off the top of your head first thing every morning. This process is commonly referred to by Artist’s Way participants as doing your “morning pages.”
How Morning Pages Help You Be More Creative
Why? To clear your head. To track inspirations. To be open to whatever might come to mind. Cameron stresses it doesn’t matter at all what you write. It might be nonsensical, stream of consciousness, or it might follow the “I don’t know what to write” theme. It might be a list of worries, or a list of goals, or a series of affirmations, or the grocery list, or the draft of a novel or all about a dream you just had. No matter what comes to mind, just put it down until you’ve done three handwritten pages.
“Although occasionally colorful,” writes Cameron, “the morning pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or bland – even silly sounding. Good!”
Meditation, Insight and Creativity
The end result of this daily practice is not to make you into a writer, not at all. The result is a daily habit of meditation, written from heart to hand, allowing you to manage stress, recognize and cut down on self-criticism, set aside your left brain so your right brain can play – ultimately yielding creative insights.
Would this work for you? Have you tried writing daily morning pages? Are you actually writing them out in long hand?
(ps the other Artist’s Way program tool is the Artist’s Date)
Read over 30 Reptitude Posts in reference to The Artist’s Way book and program.
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