Morning Pages

Morning PagesThere are brilliant insights lurking just beneath the surface of your conscious thought. You may not realize they are there because you are so busy handling your responsibilities that you gloss over them. One excellent method for mining these invaluable gems is called morning pages.This is a technique introduced by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way and involves doing three longhand pages of freewriting every morning before doing any other creative activity. The goal, as Cameron describes it, is to clear your mind of all the things that are cluttering your thoughts. She writes, “Pages clarify our yearnings. They keep an eye on our goals. They may provoke us, coax us, comfort us, even cajole us, as well as prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. If we are drifting, the pages will point that out. They will point the way true north. Each morning, as we face the page, we meet ourselves. The pages give us a place to vent and a place to dream. They are intended for no eyes but our own.”This last point is critical. Morning pages are only for you. The only goal is to spill your mind onto the page and let the writing go wherever it leads you.To keep creative ideas flowing, spill your mind onto the page each morning.QUESTIONHow soon can you try this experiment for yourself? What clutter are you harboring that can be unleashed into morning pages?