Morning pages

Hands up if you own a stack of beautiful notebooks ‘saved’ for good ideas. Other hand up if they make your stomach sink a little every time you see them.

You may not have written much in them yet, but you can do something about that, and make yourself feel better in all sorts of ways. It's not even hard.

The concept of morning pages is often attributed to Julia Cameron, who wrote the cult favourite The Artist’s Way back in 1992. She didn’t invent them though, for as long as people have had access to reasonable amounts of ink and paper, some version of morning pages has existed. You might have heard about it in a spiritual new age- or writing specific context, but even the productivity crowd is catching on.

What, how, when

3 pages in a notebook of your choice, written by hand, every morning. If there’s a reason you cannot do this, like limited hand mobility, you can write on a computer or dictate to your phone instead. But if it's available to you, I recommend writing on paper.

Now let's get the elephant out of the way: This is not journaling. This is not another arena for you to perform on, to recount your life in a flattering light for a fictitious reader. It's also not a writing exercise. And nobody’s going to read it—not even you. That part’s important. You can burn the pages immediately – I like to keep the books on my shelf as a testament to the physical weight of my thoughts. Yes I'm that pretentious.

Write before you scroll, write before you check emails. Write whatever flows through your mind, be it a shopping list, be it morning pages morning pages morning pages morning pages morning pages, or describing the weather outside. If you’re filling the pages with words, you’re doing it right. It’s hard to let your thoughts flow like this every day without eventually brushing up against your subconscious—and hopefully becoming a little friendlier with it.

You decide how big or small the pages should be – some say A4 is a must, I use A5 format notebooks with dotted paper, and a fountain pen with anything but blue ink. Maybe it feels more manageable to start with a very small book – my best tip is to start off with one you already have.

But what if you’re not a person who does anything every day? You've tried routines like this before, and it’s not tempting to set yourself up for another failure. I know that feeling very well. I'm very careful about overcommitting because I've done it so often. But after hearing about this so many times, I thought "well I already have the materials" and gave it a shot. I've taken some breaks over the past couple of years, but when I do it now, it feels a bit like I haven't showered. I can go without a few days on vacation, but I'm happy to come back to it.

Three rational arguments

1. Morning pages give you a regular practice, without the pressure to make something "good". By writing every day, you become someone who writes. Who creates. The strength of a habit doesn't depend on the amount of time you spend doing something, but how often you do it.
2. Overcoming your fear of the blank page - every day. When you feel blocked, you haven’t actually lost the ability to do your thing. You’ve just lost confidence in your ability to do it well. When you start your day with writing rubbish every day, you ease into creating, you get friendly with creating for the trash can. You practise that paper has no value, which is important because quality only comes from quantity. Morning pages are the warm-up—the creating before the creating. Professional athletes would never skip their little routine.
3. The benefits of meditation are many, but perhaps you’ve fallen off the wagon for whatever reason (that's me, hi!). So I invite you to consider morning pages a form of active meditation. This can feel more manageable because you're doing something – observing what comes to mind and putting it on paper without judging.

One page at a time

That's a lot of birds with one stone! Freshly inspired by this virtual goodie-bag of a practice, I understand if you want to jump into it and just get started. And also if it turns out to be a little less exciting, a little less instantly rewarding than you might have hoped for.

But the magic is in the ritual, the repetition. It gets easier and more addictive the more you do it – so if you try it out and hit a slump, it's better to write one tiny page a day than saving everything for Sunday. If what you want to do is 15 minutes of oil painting in the morning, or weaving, or beat making, you do your thing. But I recommend giving writing a go – the notebook brand I currently use calls it "thinking with the hand".

Morning pages is one of the very few things I do that feels like a habit. I actually want to do it.

So what are you waiting for?