Morning Pages...ish

[grayestofghosts]

I think I might start morning pages, but not really. The first issue is the first thing in the morning issue, which is something I doubt anyway. They say first thing in the morning, but does anyone even have any kinds of thoughts first thing in the morning? I am non-functional and braindead for at least a couple hours. I think my idea is more that these are pre-writing pages, writing before the actual writing, I guess.

The second thing I'm doing wrong is that the notebook I got for this is an A6, so the pages are extremely tiny. But you know what? If they're small, I'm more likely to do them.

Comments

[alaterdate]

I've been trying to do morning pages recently myself. And that they're supposed to be done first thing in the morning is something that I've been complaining about in them lol. It doesn't make sense for me because there's nothing to really write about in the morning, but maybe that's a me-problem because I usually journal in the evenings as well and feel like people must be doing one or the other. On the other hand, the boredom of trying to come up with writing anything other than "I don't know what to write" for three pages is probably where the strength of morning pages a thing comes from. (Boredom is a powerful tool.) But for me right now I feel like I've accomplished the goal if I write 3 pages/750 words a day (a lot more words than I'd normally journal). I also don't like that you're encouraged to never reread your pages. Natalie Goldberg suggests in her book Writing Down the Bones to actually go back into your morning pages and scavenge the best parts out of them, which I like a lot more as a writing process.

I hope you have fun trying out morning pages your own way too!

[biteshelter]

My morning writing is much shorter, but I have found that I like it more as a pre-work task. Writing first thing in the morning felt like making myself worry about things instead of getting worries out. Doing it as a daily "first responsibility" as I get ready to start working in general has felt more helpful. I think my morning journal entries nowadays are more meaningful to me.

Good luck with your morning pages :)

[milo_r]

I tried doing it as a way to stop myself from dicking around on my phone first thing in the morning and yeah, my thoughts weren't exactly complex (the og program tells you to do three full A4 pages and like... what???). Mostly the way Julia Cameron talks about them makes it feel like they should be for unloading your "baggage" and things that are blocking your creative juices but I'm almost never preoccupied with anything in the morning. I'm just chilling and have nothing to say and most problems seem manageable. I wonder what all those Youtubers who actually stick with it must be writing in their journals.

[grayestofghosts]

3 A4 pages is sooooo much writing!! Yes, especially in the morning before all your problems happen! Like even when I have insomnia worrying about something I wake up and am like "hmm why was I worrying about that? Am I stupid?" Writing it down when I wake up and mulling it over for that long actually seems counterproductive. Also when I wake up if my brain is actually occupied with something, it's usually, "Wow, I need to do *task* as soon as possible," so if I genuinely did it as proposed by these people, it would be 3 pages of "Wow, I need to finish this so I can actually DO THE THING. Gonna DO THE THING soon. Need to DO THE THING."

After doing this for two days I've started a couple hours after I wake up, after I've done the urgent tasks at least, so as much as I want to not dick around on my phone so much, this hasn't really stopped me.

[grayestofghosts]

Yesterday I did morning pages and even though I did spend a not-insignificant amount of time in between worrying on stuff, when I did actually sit down to write the novel in the evening, I was able to get to the actual writing pretty quickly and I got done more than usual in the amount of time I had. When I was a teenager taking creative writing classes I would always scoff at the prewriting warmup exercises because it felt like it took away from writing time but maybe I shouldn't have -- or alternatively my brain is a lot more clogged up these days and I actually need to clear it out before it gets going. Either or.

[grayestofghosts]

Yes when I was trying to journal I would do it in the evenings because it seemed logical -- that was after all the stuff happened, and you would write down the stuff that happened, naturally -- and I often found that I did not want to do it, or I would forget. The one thing that was helpful for a while was writing down tasks that I needed to do the next day as a list right before I went to bed, which isn't really journaling (but was a bullet journal task). It was less that I thought I would be bored writing for 3 pages first thing in the morning and unable to think of things to write about but more that it seemed like an irrelevant waste of time.

It's funny that everyone has so many opinions about how morning pages should be done (it needs to be A4 pages! first thing in the morning! never reread!) and yet one of the rules also seems to be 'no rules'.