Morning Pages, Night Pages, and Tired Pigeons

Adapting creative rituals to real life

Good morning,

Is it 5am and you are already up, cracking on with your day? If so, you are probably the type of person that meditates, journals and fits in a quick 30-minute workout before your kids wake up or you have to go to work. Some people even get the laundry done and write a novel before breakfast as well!

Alas, this is not me. I am not in the 5am club. And that is why “Morning Pages” do not work for me.

What are you on about and what are Morning Pages?

If you’re not familiar with this concept, back in 1992, Julia Cameron wrote what is now a very famous book called The Artist’s Way. Early on in this book, Cameron outlines a helpful little creative practice called Morning Pages. It’s quite simple, you just need to write three pages (US Letter or A4) every morning, preferably as soon as you wake up. The idea is for it to be stream-of-conscious writing, nothing planned out or grammatically correct (or even readable as in my case!) Just get thoughts and words down on paper and don’t stop until you have three pages worth. Apparently, three pages is enough to get past any mindless dribble you write down and gets you to the good stuff, possibly even some creative breakthroughs!

Many people, famous and not so famous, have extolled the benefits of doing these Morning Pages. But for me, I’m 100% not a morning person so I have not actually tried it. If I get up earlier than what feels natural, I feel physically a bit ill. I rise early when I have to and most of the time the kids wake me up far earlier than I would like (they are most definitely morning people, we even had to get them a special clock to stop them getting out of bed at 5am every day, sorry 5am clubbers).

It’s not that I don’t believe in doing Morning Pages.

In fact, I’m a huge proponent of journalling, meditating and exercising (laundry, not so much). And actually, I do write my version of Morning Pages, I call them Night Pages. For me, sitting down with a herbal tea in the quiet, dimly light evening is calming and cathartic. It helps me to sleep; it gets all the thoughts out of my head from the day. Sometimes I use it plan the next day (very very loosely mind you because in my experience, making solid plans leads to disappointment when they are messed up by a sick child or some other thing).

But, I remember reading, many years ago, a book called Make Time where one of the authors, John Zeratsky, managed to switch from being a night owl to a morning person (he describes it in this short article too). I don’t actually consider myself a night owl given I get ready for bed at 9:30pm each night. But I’m most definitely not an early bird either (maybe some sort of constantly tired looking pigeon?)

But given all the hype, I wanted to give Morning Pages a go.

So here’s what I did last night. I got a big notepad out and put it by my bed with one of my favourite pens. I set the alarm for 6:30am (I know, not exactly 5am-club-early) and meditated before bed to ensure a better sleep.

Then, this morning at 6:30am, I turned the alarm off, turned my bedside lamp on, grabbed the notepad and started writing.

I was doing it!!!

One page done. Then onto the second page… and in strolls my six year old daughter. She climbs into bed and asks if she can do some writing too. It was cute, she is just learning to write so how could I say no.

So it seems that I might need to get up just a tiny bit earlier tomorrow 😫

I’m not sure Morning Pages will ever be my thing, but I do know this: writing stuff down every day helps declutter my overactive mind. And maybe, with some more practice, I’ll get to that elusive three-page mark and out will flow some creative goodness. Let’s see.

xx

Do you do Morning Pages — or your own version of them? I’d love to hear how (and when) you make time to clear the way for creative thoughts to come through.