Morning Pages: What are they? Do they really change your life?

Living Happy Roundup

Mar 13, 2023

One year, a couple years ago, I started my life goals every morning. They are sort of silly and sort of private but they were pretty aspirational. Some practical and some not so much:

Make $100,000 a year
Have my own art show.
Be JK Rowling level of writing success.
Have my family be happy.
Have $100,000 in the bank.
Run a half marathon.
Have my art in a museum someday.
Find a way to make a positive difference in my community.
Get outside one hour each day.

Some are silly, obviously, but I actually attained a bunch of them. And these aren’t quite morning pages as created by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, but they were morning goals and they worked for me since I’m pretty much constantly working in an unfiltered semi-comatose state anyway.

So what are morning pages?

“Three pages of whatever crosses your mind — that’s all there is to it,” Cameron writes . “If you can’t think of anything to write, then write, ‘I can’t think of anything to write.…’ Do this until you have filled three pages. Do anything until you have filled three pages.”

This is called stream of consciousness writing, which is basically just writing without stopping a lot and thinking about it. It’s sort of like writing without a filter. It’s writing without that internal critic/editor standing over your shoulder and telling you that you and/or your writing sucks and putting up walls between you and the page.

Or as studiobinder writes:

“Stream of consciousness writing is a wide-open highway where your mental car can drive at full speed with nothing to block or detour ideas.”

This isn’t just for writers. It’s also for anyone who lives when it comes to morning pages.

Cameron writes, “It is impossible to write morning pages for any extended period of time without coming into contact with an unexpected inner power. Although I used them for many years before I realized this, the pages are a pathway to a strong and clear sense of self.”

Sounds pretty cool, right?

Leighann Chandler has a video about what happened when she tried morning pages for about a month, which I’ve linked below.

Three pages seem overwhelming? You can start with one or two? You can even do it goals style like me. It’s all about you. Don’t forget that, okay?

“These daily meanderings are not meant to be art. Or even writing,” Cameron writes. “I stress that point to reassure the non-writers working with this book. Writing is simply one of the tools. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”

Over on Elizabeth Dhokia’s website, she talks about morning pages and gives prompts such as the ones below taken directly from her site:

△ What are you thinking about right now?
△ What concerns you?
△ What are your goals?
△ What did you dream about?
△ How do you feel?
△ What do you see around you?
△ Why do you approach a particular situation the way you do?

There is also (of course) an app for that.

WHY DO MORNING PAGES?

A lot of people swear by them. They give them clarity. They put them in a better mood. Janine MacLachlan writes for Forbes:

They weed out the cobwebs. Morning pages are a way to hit the ground running by clearing out minutia and bringing focus to how you want to spend your day. My morning pages start with a mix of grocery lists, random tasks and errands I keep forgetting to do. By the middle of page two, though, I usually hit a rhythm of getting down real thoughts. Professional writers often use freewriting as a way to warm up at the beginning of a writing session, and three pages in the morning can set a tone of accomplishment for the day.
They bring clarity. One technique to get clarity is to use the phrase “what I really want to say is…” It gets to the essence of what might be in the back of your mind, perhaps what you want your team to accomplish, or a challenging conversation you need to have with a colleague. This is the place to practice your dialogue, finesse your key points and identify areas that might need more attention.
They accelerate ideas. Ideas are the currency of business today. Without innovation and fresh thinking, companies stagnate and sometimes languish into obscurity. The daily exercise of writing through unrelated concepts will help leaders identify ideas worth exploring in a larger context. In other words, if an inkling of an idea comes up repeatedly, it’s time to put those ideas into action.

Cameron’s Wisdom

Back in 2020, Cameron wrote the following on her blog and I’m just going to leave you with that because I think it is applicable for us all as humans not just those of us who call ourselves writers or artists.

To be an artist you must learn to let yourself be. Stop getting better. Start appreciating what you are. Do something that simply delights you for no apparent reason. Give in to a little temptation, poke into a strange doorway, buy the weird scrap of silk in a color you never wear. Make it an altar cloth, set your geranium on it, frame it—try letting yourself be that nasty, derogatory little word, “arty.” Drop the rock. A lot of great artists work in their pajamas. Ernest Hemingway and Oscar Hammerstein both worked standing up because they liked that.
Artists of all stripe tend to equate difficulty with virtue and ease with slumming. We do not lean into our ease and enjoy the ride of our gift. Instead, we make firm resolves to work on our areas of difficulty. We call this improving ourselves-okay, sometimes we do improve a wobbly area, but if we do not practice the joy of using our talents where they fall easily, we rob ourselves of self-expression. The self has a few things it “selfishly” enjoys—and it is dangerous, as an artist, to ignore these natural affections and predilections.
This is not to say you have to “give up” high art. Instead, I am saying to try “Hi, Art!” like you are waving to someone friendly out the window of your pickup truck.

There’s a great power in leaning into your strengths and your joys. I hope you lean.