Morning Pages

In March 2002, I signed up for a 12 week writing course called 'Just Write' with Jane Camens. As part of the creative process we were instructed to do an exercise called The Morning Pages.  The Morning Pages had to be done in the morning and done every morning  The purpose of the exercise is to get your writing juices flowing and like practising the piano, you need to get the cruddy stuff out of the way before the good stuff starts to flow.  (A couple of years ago on a weekend break in Amsterdam I stumbled upon The American Book Centre. I spent the entire afternoon browsing this gorgeous shop with its floor to ceiling shelves of books on every conceivable subject when looking over the shoulder of my husband as we reluctantly started to leave I spotted the The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Morning Pages came from her.  In her book, Julia writes that doing your Morning Pages every morning is like meditation (pg. 13): through the process of writing you cross over to other side of negativity.)

Back to Hong Kong, after reading the hand-out explaining the concept behind Morning Pages, I realised I do it already except I did it in the afternoon after spending the morning wallowing in self pity and working myself up into a rage and spewing my poison all over the keyboard and emailing it off to a friend on the other side of the world who I might never see again.  I timidly asked, "Why does it have to be done in the morning, what's so special about that time?" I can't remember what Jane replied but Betty sitting next to me explained, "In the morning you have your worst thoughts and by writing first thing in the morning, you get all that poison out before you have time to gloss over them." That got my attention.  Every morning I wake up hung over with self pity.  Overnight, it seems my mind fills up with the toxic sludge of 'poor me, I'm so hard done by' and in the morning I wake up pissed off with the world and just riddled with bitterness and resentment.  It doesn't matter how good the day before went, in fact it doesn't matter what happened the day before, I always wake up with this hangover without necessarily having the pleasure of drink to bring it on.

About five years ago I took up the practice of meditation.  I signed up with The Practical School of Philosophy on Anglesea Street.  I loved the course with the discussions on 'What is happiness?' and the value of being still.  At the beginning of every class we would do 10 minutes of meditation during which time I nearly always found myself dozing off.  My sister, Catherine regularly goes on retreats, meditation workshops and awareness boot camps in West Cork and Clare. She sold it to me when she said, "I find the day always goes well when I meditate".  On the days I wake up feeling neutral I meditate but on the days I wake paralysed with worry/frustration/resentment I do my Morning Pages,  If I have time I do both.

I am currently doing research on mental health for an essay I have to write for my course.  There is a history of Depression in my family which I only fully appreciated when my father passed away a few years ago.  My cousin identified it after she had her first baby and promptly nipped it in the bud.  I plan to do the same.  In my research, I came across an article on the internet in the magazine section of the New York Times called Depression's Upside by Jonah Lehrer, 25th Feb. 2010.  It linked writing with depression and creativity.  It talked about rumination; the endless 'chewing over' of thoughts in our head.  Women are particularly prone to this. Lehrer writes 'Rumination is a useless kind of pessimism, a perfect waste of mental energy. Rumination reinforces depression' and further on he writes, 'Writing is a form of thinking which enhances our natural problem solving abilities'.    For me this sums up the value of doing the Morning Pages.  The ritual doesn't just get your writing juices going, It gets your living juices going.

It is a fact that no matter how wretched I feel when I first wake up I find that after an hour of writing my mood improves.  It's not exactly carnival standard but enough to say, "Ok, no more wallowing" and I get out of bed. 

How to do it? Set the alarm for half an hour before you normally get up.  Set it for an hour if think you need more time - I give myself an hour.     Write down whatever is in your head no matter how trivial, boring, shallow or even pathetic it seems.  Even if it's 'I hate Mondays' oh God, it's raining again, I hate Christmas, my life is boring, I'm boring............' No one is ever going to see this stuff so don't  hold back.  Write for half an hour or enough to fill three A4 pages.

In The Artist's Way, Julia writes you can't keep complaining 'about a situation morning after morning without being moved to constructive action'.  In my experience, it seems writing is a process that has an innate system of progress in it; that you are propelled to move along and in doing so you arrive at the next step in the thought process and then the next and then the next....

When you are endlessly chewing over the same thoughts again and again or lying awake listening to the hamsters spinning one the wheel inside your head, or you feel you are in a rut caught in the same groove of a scratched record, write it out.  Get a notebook, any old copybook will do, pick up a pen and write it out.  Take that little crud of dirt from your mind and put it on the page.

The next morning do it again.    Write, write, write it out.  You will find yourself moving along.  The thought that was bothering will start to lessen in importance as your mind gets bored with it and moves onto other thoughts.  The original thought that was on your mind might still be there but it will trouble you less.  It will become less all-consuming and less overwhelming.  It will start to become manageable.  You will start to gain perspective and come up with ways yourself to resolve it. 

The way I see it: my mind is like a blocked drain.  The act of putting it down on paper removes a particle of dirt from my mind which then causes other dirt to shift downwards.  This in turn creates more room for other dirt to move.  This dirt eventually gives way to allow the water to flow through and with it solutions to problems, higher quality thoughts, creativity, and light. This cleansing of your mind allows it to work efficiently free of negativity.    The point is to scratch the dirt until it moves and keep scratching until it is gone.  If you suffer from insomnia as I sometimes do, don't like in bed helplessly willing yourself back to sleep.  Get up and write.  Sometimes, after half an hour of writing I get sleepy and go back to sleep.  Other times, I get up and start the day.  Either way it's an improvement on lying in the dark with your brain galloping at 90 miles an hour.

It's like constipation.  Why keep in the poison when with a little patience and pen and paper you can ease it out.  You will be lighter and brighter for the day.

Set your alarm.  Wake up.  And just write.