My Initial Reactions to the Morning Pages

Everyone who has participated in the Artist’s Way 12 week journey has become deeply acquainted with the morning pages. For some, it might not be the best relationship—some people may have negative things to say about this tool. However, for many people these pages might have been their saving grace, the very tool that lit the path towards their creative enlightenment. 

 

Although I am nowhere near done this journey, I thought it would be important to note my initial reactions to the morning pages. I think it will be interesting to compare these first thoughts with my thoughts throughout the journey and with other peoples’ opinions.

 

For anyone who doesn’t know, the morning pages consist of three handwritten pages of basically whatever you want every single morning. Yes, it should be equivalent to three full pages of standard notebook paper. Yes, Julia Cameron is insistent upon it being handwritten. And yes, she says it has to be done every single morning for 12 weeks. 

When I read that my mind immediately rushed to the calculations. So you mean I’m going to be writing morning pages for 84 days? Which means I will be writing 252 pages total? We don’t even get a rest day? I felt a little pale in the face. It seemed like a huge commitment. Not to mention that it said the pages would take about 30 minutes every morning. Also is this even going to be beneficial? 

 

I am someone who likes to get up to start my day pretty much immediately. I would way rather set my alarm closer to the time that I actually have to start getting ready than to set it for earlier and lay in bed for no reason. I’d rather get the extra couple minutes of sleep and then pounce out of bed at the sound of my alarm. That’s just how I usually am. 

 

Now, I am being told that I have to set my alarm 30 minutes earlier and write every morning as basically the first thing I do. I thought about the mornings I’d have after spending the night with my friends. Usually these mornings are solely filled with talking to each other and deciding on what we should eat for breakfast. It felt so weird to image myself finding a quiet space to write for 30 minutes while I was with friends. Of course I think they would understand, but the idea of it just seemed odd to me, and I could picture my motivation to write being fiercely tested in these circumstances. 

 

After I thought about the time, I started to think about the actual content. What would I actually write in these pages? I wanted to use them productively to some extent. Maybe I would fill parts of the pages with creative ideas or things to put myself in a positive mindset. I could also use them to put some of my personal goals to paper.

 

I was thinking I could use a portion of the morning pages as a to-do list for the day, but Julia Cameron said that we’re not really supposed to look back at our pages until week 8 or so. That advice put a big line through my idea (which would’ve helped me fill the pages), because if I shouldn’t be looking back then I wouldn’t be able to cross things off or even see what was on the list. (I’m really curious to see what the eighth week will entail) 

 

I imagined a good amount of my pages would be filled with random thoughts like “I’m hungry” and “It’s sunny outside,” because the book said that thoughts like these are welcome on the pages. The goal is to get it on the paper and out of your brain, whatever it may be.

Despite all of these “rules” of course this isn’t actually mandatory, I am choosing to do this process at my own will, but I want to do it right. The morning pages are definitely somewhat intimidating, they appear repetitive and time consuming. But, regardless of feeling slightly uneasy, I was going to do it, one page at a time.