I first discovered Morning Pages through Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” about 7 years ago. It’s one of her tools to get over your inner critic and dump all your thoughts, worries, hopes and dreams on paper to get “to the other side” and become free to create your art.

If you want to try it put a notebook and pen next to your bed and start writing when you wake up in the morning (For me that was quite difficult in the last few years with toddlers and babies sitting on my notebook and chewing my pen but recently Martin has been taking them out of the room every morning and I had time to write – Thank you my love!).

So if you are lucky and have time to do so fill three full pages with whatever comes to your mind. Don’t stop, even if you don’t know what to write about – just write that you don’t know over and over again until something else emerges from your creative brain.

It could go something like this: “Morning again. My brain feels like mush…no idea what to write about…didn’t have a great night sleep. F was up crying four times again..must be getting his new teeth. Really don’t feel like writing this morning but I’ll do it anyway..don’t know what to write..yesterday I saw an interesting book at the library..it really caught my eye because it was on..” and so on.

This might seem pointless first but it’s not. You usually go through different phases during your writing and at some stage something interesting might come up. An idea for a project, a blog post, a painting, something you want to do or to try, maybe a solution to a problem.

Instead of just reading and admiring the work of other people you tap into your own well of ideas, into all the treasures that are inside you. And there is so much more inside you than you might think at this moment. Don’t be discouraged if your brilliance doesn’t show straight away. Give it a bit of time and wait for your ideas to unfold.

Recently I’ve been having lots of dreams that I thought about in my morning pages (like the one I wrote about last week). Sometimes they become clearer when I write them down. I suddenly remember more details and they help me to find out more about myself.

Sometimes nothing interesting comes up during the process and that’s okay too.

I have been writing Morning Pages on and off, usually a few months at a time and then not at all for a year or so. I’ve gone through different stages with them but always found writing them extremely helpful for whatever issues I was dealing with at the time.

There have been times when it made me sad because writing brought up things that I didn’t want to think about but pouring myself out onto the page helped me work through it.

Does anyone of you write Morning Pages? Or have you tried something similar like free writing? I would love to hear about your experiences!