discovering morning pages

I’ve heard the words “morning pages” and “artist’s date” from a Yahoo!Group I was a part of , but I must admit that I haven’t really paid much attention to them before; I always assumed that “morning pages” meant finding time in the morning to do pages and “artist’s date” being a thing to do or a place to go to encourage creativity.

Although I wasn’t too far off the mark with the artist’s date, I didn’t realise “morning pages” wasn’t just a flippant phrase, but an activity which means quite a lot to many people.

I’m sure most people who visit this page already know what “morning pages” and “artist’s date” are, so I won’t bore you with the details. For those who are new to the idea, please feel free to visit Julia Cameron’s website, where she has generously uploaded pages from her book, “The Artist’s Way” that specifically describes what the two activities are.

Below is are the pages from my first attempt at doing morning pages (as I was using a Moleskine sketchbook, I counted a double page spread as one page). The first three pages were pre-background and I thought I would stop writing there. However I felt an urge to continue and boy was I glad I did.



It could have been because of the backgrounds that were already laid out, or that I was slower to relax because it was my first try, but I only begun to let go on my fourth page. My handwriting started getting larger and messier until I no longer cared that I couldn’t read what I’ve written – it was all about letting it out. It was quite fun.

Those pages were done after I got home from work. As the point of the pages were for me to unload, I believe I had more to write about after work than if I wrote after waking up refreshed from a good night’s sleep. By doing my pages after I get home, I would have left my stressful work day behind me and free to get on to some creative stuff.

I’ve read elsewhere that doing the pages at the end of the day doesn’t work for them as they end up recording the events of the day which leaves them exhausted. I personally feel that by writing about the day, I would be able to put things into perspective. But everyone is free to do as they will. As Julia Cameron says, there’s no wrong way of doing it.

I know we aren’t meant to re-read our morning pages, nor are we to share them (to avoid feeling the need to censor our pages), that’s why I kept the pictures small. But anyone else want to share their experiences with morning pages?