The Artist's Way and the Morning Pages Process

For the past few weeks I've been taking part in Julia Cameron’s course, The Artist’s Way. It’s a twelve week course, meant to help you tap in, tune on, and let the creativity flow. After a year and a half running a food business with my family and my writing becoming less and less frequent and... well flowing... I figured it was a good idea to start. 

It’s an exciting journey. It’s a hard journey. I've still yet to take my “artist’s date”, an outing where you are suppose to do something for yourself, something to satisfy your inner child/artist. A coffee date, a movie alone, a bookstore hunt, even a bath; two hours, planned ahead, scheduled and achieved. It’s made me aware that my life is pretty jammed packed. But it’s also made me aware that if I have 2 hours alone, I’d sooner be in front of my computer or pen and paper writing, creating and tapping into the flow more than anything. This is my date. I didn’t plan a babysitter, I didn’t plan what I was going to write. I just sat here, and said “flow”.

What I am getting the most out of is the “morning pages.”; which I’m proud to say I’m doing rather religiously. Sometimes my five year old wakes up and sits beside me to do his “pages”, scribbles in his notebook which are lovely, and my daughter will sometimes do some in her diary, when she gets up in time. The idea is 3 pages, first thing or as close to as possible, handwritten about anything. Every little niggle, every little morning fleeting thought, every buried dream, every wishful thought, but mostly, those boring daily doldrums that seem to be put on repeat without us even noticing it. You know what, when you write them three days in a row you start to notice them. I’ve noticed a lot.

 So I’ve started looking for new thoughts, which suddenly means breaking down old thought processes. Suddenly, Morning Pages are miraculous. Suddenly Morning Pages need capitalization. Julia Cameron breaks it down that as long as you are doing morning pages, you are doing them right. You write them, don’t re-read them, lock them up, seal them in an envelope, burn them, whatever feels right, or like me, write them in a notebook and never look back. I don’t have the time, I’m too excited to move forward, to see what will come out in the next page. I've been sorting out things, asking questions, getting answers, Source, Universal powers, God, jumping onto the flow of words getting me messages and nudges. Yesterday I saw an Abraham Hicks quote saying that writing is the most focus a human can establish in physical reality, therefore it can quickly shift vibration, suddenly through my morning pages I’m doing visualizations, painting pictures of thoughts that make me feel good, my dream life at the moment, stories of laughing children and stress free living.

When I started my pages four weeks ago, I struggled filling my three pages. I felt ridiculous. I’m a writer. I write. I’m suppose to let lose my sub-conscious and just write the thoughts, the monkey mind chatter that is rolling by. But I’d lose focus, I’d get bored, they weren’t real thoughts. Now, I get to the end of my third page and I wonder if I’ll just flow over to four or five pages... but then my boy looks over, counts the pages I’ve done, raises his eyebrows and says Mom, I’m hungry, you’re finished. Let’s have breakfast!