It is a snowy winter evening in Santa Fe. I am snowbound in a small adobe house. The dirt roads leading to my driveway are slick with ice. There is no getting out. I am determined to make the most of my enforced solitude. I’ve lit a fire in the Kiva fireplace and cued up beautiful music. I am curled up on our leather couch, ten feet from a sparkling Christmas tree bedecked with tiny birds. My little dog, Tiger Lily, is curled by my feet, puzzled that I am writing by firelight. She is accustomed to me writing in my “writing room,” and writing by daylight.
First things first, every day, is a practice I call “Morning Pages.”
The MPs, as I’ve nicknamed them, are three pages of longhand morning writing about anything and everything that crosses my mind. They appear to have nothing to do with creativity, yet they are the bedrock on which my creative life is built. They are the terra firma of my book The Artist’s Way and the central, life-changing tool that guides and safeguards creative emergence. I have written about Morning Pages many times, in many places. I am writing about them here because students still raise many questions, and I’d like to answer them carefully and fully.
To begin at the beginning, I am always asked, “Julia, must the Morning Pages be done in the morning?”
“Yes,” I explain. “You are trying to catch yourself before your ego’s defenses are in place. You want to catch yourself as close to waking as you can.” We are after candor—that, and specificity. We want to know how you really feel about your life. Later in the day, you may officially feel “okay” about something that actually bothers you. Caught off guard, just upon awakening, you may feel angry, hurt, diminished. As you vent on the page, you become intimate with yourself and your real feelings. Not only sorrows but joys become clear to you.
Morning Pages may hold insights and intuitions that startle you. Typically, they puncture denial. As one recovering alcoholic student told me, “Julia, I was perfectly happy drunk in the outback. Now I’m sober, living in Los Angeles, working as a Hollywood screenwriter.” The pages identified her drinking problem. “Drunk last night,” they noted. “Hungover today,” they confessed. “Maybe you have a drinking problem,” they speculated. “Drunk again last night. You definitely do have a drinking problem,” they concluded. “Maybe you need to get sober,” they suggested firmly. And their guidance was taken to heart.
If Morning Pages are a tough-love friend, nagging you about a pressing problem, they also point out joys. You might delight in something the pages help you to acknowledge. The pages may point the way to a treasured friendship, or lead you to a new art form. They may suggest the path you could cherish.
It was my Morning Pages that led me to write music. “Wouldn’t it be fun,” they proposed, “to write a musical about Merlin?”
“But I’m not musical,” I protested, only to have the pages insist I would soon be writing “radiant songs.” Sure enough, when I sat at the keys, I heard melodies that I could pick out a note at a time.
Pages clarify our yearnings. They keep an eye on our goals. They may provoke us, coax us, comfort us, even cajole us, as well as prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. If we are drifting, the pages will point that out. They will point the way True North. Each morning, as we face the page, we meet ourselves. The pages give us a place to vent and a place to dream. They are intended for no eyes but our own.
Virginia Wolfe asserted that “all artists need a room of their own.” I always think, “Fine, Virginia, if you can afford it.” It’s my contention that Morning Pages constitute such a room. They are a place of privacy. Show your MPs to no one, however intimate. For the first two months, don’t even re-read them yourself. If something is important, your Morning Pages will bring it up repeatedly, until you get the message and take an indicated action. Make no mistake: Morning Pages are about action. Unlike conventional meditation, which may lull you out of taking action, the pages magnify our discontent, pointing out actions we could take. The pages tend to point out our many choice points. We are egged on to increased honesty and candor. Our life becomes our own. We no longer sell ourselves out, giving our time and energy to others’ agendas. We have a choice whether to invest in others or ourselves. Investing in ourselves is novel for many of us.
“But, Julia, that sounds so selfish.”
Yes. Most blocked creatives need to be a little selfish. They are often caught in what I call the “virtue trap,” that is to say they act nice rather than authentic. They give their time, energy, and money to others. They ignore their own needs and desires. They are “good sports.” The price tag for this behavior is very high, and Morning Pages point out the cost. We find ourselves setting new boundaries. We no longer say “yes” when we need to say “no.”
The fire is demanding another log. I lay one in place, and continue writing.
At first, our newly healthy behaviors may meet with opposition. We have jiggled the mobile of our relationships. Our piece claims a new position. The other pieces jangle. Our new self worth comes into criticism. Just who do we think we are? The answer is, “I’m finding that out.” We are engaged in finding ourselves. We are no longer a free battery for others. No wonder they protest.
Although it may feel like we are going crazy, the truth is we are going sane. We are learning to be who we really are. Each day’s pages take a swipe at the blur we are accustomed to enduring. As our true self becomes clearer, we find ourselves possessed of an inner strength that had long eluded us. Moving our hand across the page, we find ourselves crafting a new life.
“Julia, you say ‘moving our hand across the page.’ Must I really write pages longhand? I’m so much faster on the computer.”
Again, yes. Pages must be done longhand. The computer is fast—too fast for our purposes. Writing by computer gets you speed but not depth. Writing by computer is like driving a car at 85 mph. Everything is a blur. “Oh, my God, was that my exit?” Writing by hand is like going 35 mph. “Oh, look, here comes my exit. And look, it has a Sonoco station and a convenience store.” Longhand pages give us detail and the truth of how we feel emotionally. Accuracy is what we are after, not velocity. Longhand pages tell us precisely how we feel. These feelings may be uncomfortable, but they are ours. We name them, claim them. No longer ignored or obscured, they can be faced squarely. Once faced, they can no longer sabotage us. We find ourselves acting rather than acting out.
It’s time to add yet another log to the fire. Tiger Lily has moved close to the hearth, toasty warm. Writing this essay by hand, I realize I have made the pages sound darker than they may feel. There is great comfort in writing the pages daily. Many times people have told me, “Pages got me through a dark time.” They mention a bout with cancer or a difficult divorce. The pages gave them strength and optimism. “I wrote pages in poetry,” one woman told me. “The writing saved my life quite literally—I was suicidally depressed. Pages showed me that life was worth living.”
I can hear the next question crackling like the fire: “Julia, I meditate. Which should I do first, pages or meditation?”
Pages should come first. They tell you your concerns and point you toward actions you can take. Meditation, by contrast, tends to talk you out of action. If you have a problem and you take it into Morning Pages, you will be given a sense of a possible next step. If you take the same problem into meditation, you may find yourself so spiritually “high” that no action seems necessary.
The Artist’s Way is a spiritual path built on action. The Morning Pages ask you to act out on faith. Small steps lead to large breakthroughs. A page at a time, a step at a time, you are led forward in the direction of your buried dreams. Excavated, brought to light, the dreams move you toward divinity. If you work on your creativity, you will grow spiritually. If you work on your spirituality, you will grow creatively. Creativity and spirituality are so close they are intertwined. We call God “the Creator” without realizing it is another word for “artist.” The Creator is the consummate artist. As we explore and express our artistry, we are imitating God. Is it any wonder we begin to find spiritual support?
Morning Pages are a potent form of prayer. As we become more and more truthful, we become more truly ourselves. We become more and more original because we become clearly the origin that our work springs from. We become more bold—first on the page, next in our life. We learn to miniaturize our Censor, the negative voice that frightens and intimidates us, bullying us out of making art. Because there is no wrong way to write Morning Pages, we learn to ignore the Censor’s negative judgments. We begin to learn to hear our Censor as a cartoon character who is habitually negative. We learn to hear our Censor’s comments and say, simply, “Thank you for sharing,” while we go right on writing. We are training our Censor to stand aside and let us create. We are training the Censor that we’re the boss. First with Morning Pages, and next with our art, this trick of miniaturizing the Censor stands us in good stead. We learn to have our fears and doubts, and then move past them.
Many times, students come to me hoping to lose their fear. They believe “real artists” are fearless. Instead, I teach them to have their fears and act anyhow. “Real” artists are people who have learned to create despite their fears. They have the knack of miniaturizing their Censor.
I have found it helps to satirize your Censor. Some people choose Bruce, the shark from Jaws. Others use Pigpen, the Peanuts character surrounded by a cloud of dust alongside Charlie Brown. My Censor is someone I call Nigel. Nigel is a gay British designer whose aesthetics are impossibly high. My work can never measure up to Nigel’s standards. I have learned to say, “Thank you for sharing, Nigel, but I think I’ll just keep going.”
“I’ll just keep going” is a central lesson taught by Morning Pages. The pages may seem dull to you, even pointless, but they are not. Remember that they are not intended to be “art.” They pave the way for art. Each page you write is a small manifesto. You are declaring your freedom—freedom from your Censor, freedom from negativity in any quarter.
“But Julia, I am the negative one,” I am sometimes told.
Yes. Sometimes we are our own wet blanket. The answer? Keep writing. Eventually you will tire of your own pessimism. Eventually you will detect the faint pipings of joy. Sometimes, when a student persists in negativity, I will tease, “Morning Pages could be spelled Mourning Pages.” Grief that has been long buried comes to the surface. The pages recount our grievances at the hands of others, and often, our grievances by no hand but our own. We remember—and mourn—lost opportunities. We see the many doors we did not walk through. We see where we shrank back. Our lack of courage grieves us. We are not, as we had told ourselves, the victim of circumstances. We played an active part in our own undoing.
Take heart: continue your pages. A rich and abundant life lies ahead of you. The pages tutor you in making the most of opportunities. You will face your creative U-turns and see how to gently take small steps to undo them.
Vigi, a long-blocked photographer, picked up a camera and squeezed off a few shots. Laura, who loved to dance but forbade herself this joy, signed up for a Zumba class and gleefully executed its festive movements. Mark, a blocked musician, bought himself a used drum kit and played along to rock and roll favorites. In each case, Morning Pages suggested the joyful act. In each case, the suggestion met with resistance, but the pages were stubborn. All of the excuses not to act began to sound flimsy. The risks suggested finally stood exposed as doable. The smallest action yielded large rewards in self-worth, self-esteem, and self-love.
“In ten years, I have missed perhaps four days of pages,” reports Daniel. His pages led him to write a novel and then to self-publish it. His pages mentored him into a career as a fine arts portrait photographer. They encouraged him to bill properly for his time. He became solvent in his creativity, and he credits the Morning Pages with leading him forward.
“I’ve come to believe there is a divine plan of goodness for my work,” Daniel says. Gifted as a writer, photographer, actor, and director, he no longer demands of himself that he choose one skill over another. Morning Pages have helped him to inhabit each skill by turn.
“I listen for what wants to come next,” Daniel explains. He trusts that apparent detours are leading him to a fulfilling goal. He listens for guidance and acts on what he hears. “Time to write again.” “Time for some photography.” The pages entice him down paths that bring him joy. “You could direct that play you love.” “You might want to toss your hat in the ring as an actor.” Obedient to the nudges that he receives, Daniel enjoys a hydra-headed career.
“Julia, this is going to sound really petty, but is there a right-sized paper for pages?”
Yes, there is a right size, and that is 8.5” x 11”. If you use a smaller notebook, you will find yourself miniaturizing your thoughts to fit the format. If you use a larger tablet, three full pages will be daunting and take too much time. The three pages of 8.5” x 11” seems to be perfect. The first page and a half often come easily. Then there is an invisible wall, and the second page and a half comes harder, but often contains paydirt. Often the last paragraph brings insights and breakthroughs.
“Julia, if the last paragraph brings a breakthrough, can’t I keep on writing more than three pages?”
No! To write more than three pages is to invite self-involvement and narcissism. The pages are therapeutic, and three pages is the ideal dose. Think of it like this: let us say you undertake therapy. The first session is a tremendous relief. Then, the wise therapist says, “I’ll see you again in a week.” You may want to shriek, “But what about tomorrow?” But the skilled therapist wants you to have time to absorb the fruitful session. So it is with Morning Pages. They give us just the amount of insight that we can handle. They suggest doable next steps. They gently move us into action, but not into such large actions that we are overwhelmed.
Trust the prescription of three pages a day. The Artist’s Way has worked for nearly four million readers. Let it work for you just as it is designed.
I step out into the frosty night air and retrieve two logs from the woodpile. Back inside, I carefully place them on the fire. They are quick to catch, and lively flames leap up. Tiger Lily lies hearthside, chewing on an elk bone. The fire crackles and pops. Now it is too warm, and she retreats to the far edge of my Persian rug. I am writing still, and she is a loyal companion to my process.
“Julia, I still don’t understand why the pages must be done in the morning. I write so much better at night.”
Let me be clear: good writing is not the point. Think of your pages like a whisk broom. You stick the broom into all the corners of your consciousness. If you do this first thing in the morning, you are laying out your track for the day. Pages tell you of your priorities. With the pages in place first thing, you are much less likely to fall in with others’ agendas. Your day is your own to spend. You’ve claimed it. If you wait to write pages at night, you are reviewing a day that has already happened and that you are powerless to change. I sometimes joke, “I’ve been teaching for twenty-five years, but I’ve learned that I’m wrong. Now you can write Evening Pages.” But no such luck. Morning Pages are the ticket.
“Julia, I work with my dreams. Can I use Morning Pages to record them?”
No. Recording a dream can gobble up your pages. Remember that the pages are intended to sweep our consciousness clean. If you have used half of your pages to record a dream, you won’t have room enough left for all the corners to be swept clean. I suggest you take a separate piece of paper and jot down cues to remember your dream. Then go quickly into Morning Pages. Do not dawdle. The success of Morning Pages hinges on our doing them as close to awakening as we can.
“Julia, does that mean no coffee?”
I like to say I teach adults. That means I wouldn’t dream of forbidding coffee. But don’t take thirty minutes to brew the perfect cup. You may want to do as I do: I brew my coffee the night before, and put the pot into the refrigerator. In the morning, I add cream and enjoy my iced coffee, which allows me to get quickly to the page. I suppose I am something of a fanatic, but iced coffee works for me.
The fire is sputtering as the logs burn low. From where I sit, a bookcase holding Morning Pages is visible. This brings me to my next question.
“Julia, what do you do with Morning Pages?”
Students have burned them, shredded them, even buried them. Some, like me, hold onto their pages, thinking they will someday have a use for them. I saved mine, believing I would need them someday if I wrote a memoir. I did write a memoir—my book Floor Sample—but I did not use my Morning Pages. Instead, I simply remembered—although I think the clarity of my memories was from writing Morning Pages, recording the days as they passed into years. I have a storage locker in Taos, New Mexico, that is filled with my Morning Pages. I sometimes joke that our wills should read, “Cremate the Morning Pages, then worry about the body.” My daughter, Domenica, knows to destroy the pages. In death as in life, the pages are private.
“Julia, I’m worried my partner will read them.”
I am lucky. I have never lived with anyone who would pry into my pages. But I have had students who hid their pages; students who carried them with them; students who locked them in their car; students who put them in a safe-deposit box. The point is that pages are for our eyes only. We use them to dream and to vent. We say things in passing that we later may reconsider. We may write, “My lover is a rat.” We don’t want said lover reading our pages. So I suggest you take whatever protective measures you deem necessary. Do not allow your fears to keep you from writing.
Tiger Lily abandons her bone and sniffs the air. The logs burning are piñon and very fragrant. The whole little house smells like Christmas.
More snow is predicted. Before it starts, I slip outside and pluck more logs from the woodpile. Back inside, I stack them near the fireplace. If it’s snowing outside, I will want a fire.
“Julia, do you still do Morning Pages?”
Yes. For many years the pages have been my companion. They guide me and guard me. They have shaped my career and my personal life. They have heightened my intuition and advised me of my shortcomings. They have warned me of danger and they have led me to safety. I can’t imagine a life without them. It would be like driving at night with no headlights.
The fire is burning low. I decide to let it gutter out. I’ve written quite a bit, and it’s bedtime. Tiger Lily follows me as I pad back to my bedroom. It has felt good to write about Morning Pages. I will write more tomorrow.
~
It’s another cold and icy day. Morning Pages record my dismay. “Snowbound again.” “Snowbound still.” I have the number of a man named Amador who will come and plow my driveway. When I call him I get his voice mail. I leave him a message: “SOS! Come plow me out!”
I settle in to wait, lighting a new fire in the Kiva fireplace. The flames lick brightly. Tiger Lily takes up a position close to the hearth. She stays there until the heat becomes too intense. Then she moves to the Persian rug where she lolls on her back, signaling “pet me.” I stroke her belly, caress her floppy ears. “I’m going to work now, girl,” I tell her. I retreat to a leather love seat, switching on a nearby lamp. The sky outside is glowering. The house is dark. I flick on all the lamps and settle in to write. There are still questions to answer.
“Julia, Morning Pages are now a firmly entrenched spiritual practice. How did they begin?”
Morning Pages began in Taos, New Mexico. I was a Hollywood screenwriter at the time. I had just written a script for Jon Voight. His producing partner had called me up full of good tidings. My script was “brilliant,” he declared, “first-rate,” “perfect.” After all the accolades, he went radio silent. I phoned him repeatedly, to no avail. Our project was stalled. Like a locomotive racing onto an ice floe, it went cold.
I turned to my friends, seeking solace for what seemed to me to be a creative miscarriage. Through the grapevine, word filtered back to me: cocaine. There was no getting past the addiction. My movie was a casualty of war.
Brokenhearted, I took myself to Taos to lick my wounds. I rented a tiny adobe house at the end of a dirt road. My daughter, used to the hubbub of New York, hated the quiet and isolation. I bought her an Indian pony, but not even the colt, named Cocoa Warbonnet, could cheer her up. I took to getting up early, before my daughter’s misery colored the atmosphere.
Our house had two rooms: one for sleeping and one for waking. The waking room featured a large window facing north to Taos Mountain. I placed a large pine table directly in front of the window. It was my writing table. Every morning I would go to the table and write. I set my quota at three pages a day. I would barely finish before my daughter woke up.
My three pages daily began as a long lament over my brilliant career. The fiasco with Jon Voight was the final straw. I had sold a string of movies that hadn’t gotten made. My writer’s heart was breaking. It didn’t matter to me that my story was a common one among screenwriters. “You get paid good money” was no consolation. I wrote movies for love, not money. When my movies didn’t get made I suffered heartbreak. My Morning Pages recounted my creative suffering.
Day after day, I bled onto the page. And then, one day, I noticed that the mountain outside my window was beautiful. Its flanks were folded purple and gold. I recorded its beauty. The next day’s pages began with the beauty of the mountain. And then, unexpectedly, a character strolled into my consciousness. Her name was “Johnny,” and she had a story to tell. Suddenly, a novel loomed before me. I finished my three pages of longhand writing, and then took to the typewriter for three pages of novel. By the time my daughter woke up, I was exhilarated.
Talking to my friends on the coasts, I told them about my practice of Morning Pages. I told them I had been led to a novel. “Try the pages,” I urged. “See what comes up for you.” I must have been very persuasive, because my friends undertook Morning Pages. They, too, found themselves led in new and thrilling directions. I, meanwhile, continued my Morning Pages and continued the novel. As the novel neared to a close, my MPs began to urge me back to New York.
Before the first big winter snowfall, I packed my car and headed back east. My daughter was elated. She couldn’t wait to get back to Manhattan and her friends. As for me, I faced a new teaching position at the New York Feminist Art Institute. I was slated to teach “Creative Unblocking,” and I knew that meant I would be assigning Morning Pages.
It’s been twenty-five years now since I taught my first class. For twenty-five years, I’ve written Morning Pages and urged others to try them. The evidence continues to mount that pages are potent. One student wrote pages and found herself moving from Los Angeles to the mountains. Another student in his mid-fifties enrolled for a master’s degree in poetry.
I hear many such tales.
“Morning Pages saw me through my mother’s death.”
“Morning Pages saw me through a terrible divorce.”
“Morning Pages led me to adopt a child.”
“Morning Pages led me to composing.”
As I write these pages on Morning Pages, I listen to a CD made by a student. The melodies are beautiful, and they are the fruit of Morning Pages. The note reads, “Julia, I hope you enjoy listening to this CD as much as I enjoyed making it.”
“Enjoyment” may be the right word for the transformation that Morning Pages induce. No matter how dreary, sad, or angry we may be when we undertake pages, sooner or later we will realize that our pages contain many choice points. We see that we choose over and over how we will spend our day. Sooner or later, we will begin to make more satisfying choices. For example, “I have twenty minutes. Should I grab some time at the piano?”
Day by day, pages tutor us. We learn to act in our own best interests. We stop being victims of circumstance. A choice at a time, we begin to craft a life that reflects our authentic values. Rather than sitting on the sidelines critiquing the game, we start to participate.
Pages are excavation. As we clear away the rubble of our previous, unconscious life, we begin to encounter “paydirt.” We learn who we are and what we are. One of the first fruits of Morning Pages is a heightened sense of personal identity. You look with clearer eyes at yourself and the world around you. Slowly, a page at a time, your true self is revealed. You may feel a sense of wonder as your real identity becomes clear. Skepticism gives way to curiosity.
“Who am I?” you ask, and the pages reveal the answer. As you become more clearly yourself, your relationships begin shifting. You no longer say “yes” when what you really want to say is “no.” You are starting to know—and speak—your mind. You may stand accused of being selfish. In the very best sense, this is accurate. Your true self is becoming more visible, less enmeshed in the desires and expectations of others. This can be frightening to you as well as others. It is pivotal that you treat yourself gently. As the pages strip away falsehoods, the newly exposed self is often vulnerable and raw. Take good care of yourself. Remember that “treating yourself like a precious object will make you strong.”
Be strong. Call on your inner resilience. You may be tempted to abandon the pages and return to the person you were, the person who was blocked. “Better safe than sorry,” you may tell yourself.
Well, I am here to remind you that you were both safe and sorry. No one undertakes the Morning Pages who is not hungry for change. “Safe and sorry” is the identity you are shedding. You are not who you were, but you are not yet who you are becoming. Picture yourself as a hatchling—awkward, but becoming free.
“Julia, my pages are making me angry.”
To be accurate, pages don’t make us angry. Instead, they reveal people and situations that make us angry. As you write daily pages, putting your current life in order, bits and pieces of your past will surface, including memories of the times where you gave away too much of yourself. These memories fill us with anger.
“I wasted a lot of time on Jim,” you may think. “I was a battery for all of his projects.” You no longer want to serve as a battery for Jim or anyone else. Your resolution to be more discerning may come as a wave of clarity. Suddenly, you hear yourself speaking up.
“No, it’s not alright that you’re late.”
“No, I’m not lending you more money.”
“No, I’m not typing your thesis for you.”
“No, I’m not selfish or crazy. I’m just fed up with being your battery.”
Your anger is a signal that you are reclaiming misplaced power. You may feel this power as heightened energy in your body. You may catch yourself running or singing. You are possessed of a new voltage. Use some of it on self-care.
Buy better groceries. Change your sheets an extra time. Indulge in a deep bubble bath. Listen to a favorite CD. Go for a long walk just for the hell of it. Make a pot of homemade vegetable soup. Do as I do, and build yourself a fire. Tiger Lily is curled on the Persian rug, nibbling at a paw. She may have a salt nugget back there. When I let her out, she plunges into the snowdrifts, but always circles back on the salted entryway to the house. A few pebbles of salt inevitably cling to her paws when she steps inside. They are a salty delicacy.
“Julia, I think I must be doing the pages wrong. Mine are dull, petty, and repetitive—hardly inspirational.”
There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. Remember, they are not intended to be art. They might be what is called “brain drain”—the siphoning off of negativity is one of their main functions.
“I forgot to call my sister back.” “The car has a funny knock.” “I need to buy kitty litter.” There is nothing too petty to be mentioned. Morning Pages are not intended to be exalted. They may not even seem to be writing because they are so fragmented. Remember, nothing is too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included. Morning Pages are not intended to sound “smart,” although sometimes they may. More often, they will sound dumb, but no one will ever know except you.
Remind yourself not to read your pages for the first eight weeks or so. Just write three pages and stick them in a manila envelope. Or write three pages in a spiral notebook, and don’t leaf back through. Just write three pages today, and three more pages tomorrow, and three pages the day after that.
January 3, 2013
I’m having trouble with my fire. I think I’ve let too many ashes build up, and it smothers the logs. Tiger Lily is lying close to the hearth, chewing on her elk bone. She is the very picture of a contented dog.
Although occasionally festive, the pages are frequently negative and fragmented. They may be stilted or even self-pitying.
January 4, 2013
I woke up with a headache this morning. There was no aspirin in the house. I retreated back to bed with a hot, wet rag on my forehead. It helped.
Think of Morning Pages as a soundtrack that would ordinarily accompany your day. All that petty, whiny, self-pitying stuff lies between you and your creativity. Worrying about your work deadline, your lover’s coolness, your dry cleaning—this eddies all day through your subconscious. Instead, write it out. Get it on the page. Be rid of it.
Expect your Censor to comment on your goings-on. Remember that your Censor is a cartoon character, not the voice of reason. When your Censor weighs in with a negative remark, thank it for sharing and keep right on with what you were writing. It helps to know that your Censor’s most vicious remarks accompany your most original thoughts.
Think of your blank page as a meadow. Your Censor guards the gateway in. It will let mundane thoughts—like cows—into the meadow. It gives the right-of-way to thoughts it has seen many times before. But just try to slip a zebra or a unicorn, a truly original thought, past the Censor, and it will howl with outrage. Learn to say to yourself, “My Censor is acting up because I am being original.” Tell yourself this frequently enough, and you will find your Censor declawed.
“Julia, doesn’t the Censor ever go away?”
No. The Censor seems to be a permanent fixture in our psyches. I recently spent a year writing a book that my Censor hated. Every day when I finished writing, my Censor, Nigel, would say, “Well, that was no good.” Month after month, Nigel kept up his negativity. When I finished the book, Nigel told me it was unpublishable. I gave the book to my publisher, Joel Fotinos, telling him that it might not be any good. I asked him to be frank with me, to tell me if it was too flawed to see the light of day. I waited with dread for his verdict. He phoned me up and said, “This book is excellent. Really original. I’m happy to publish it.”
“It isn’t rotten?” I asked.
“You’ve been listening to Nigel,” Joel chided me. “The book is fine. One of the best that you’ve done.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
And so, I published the book, but not without wondering how many times Nigel had outsmarted me. Looking back over my career, I could count at least half a dozen projects that I had scuttled, believing Nigel’s condemnation that the work was no good.
I tell you this as a cautionary tale. Be alert for your Censor’s vilification of your work. Let your Morning Pages be a practice field. “Thank you for sharing, but I think I’ll just keep writing.”
Make no mistake: the further you go in your artistry, the shrewder your Censor’s comments will become. Let us say you write a first novel. Your Censor will tell you it’s unpublishable. Say you do publish it, and you settle in to write a second novel. Your Censor will say you are a “one-book author.” Sell the second book and settle in to write a third, and your Censor will tell you you are out of original ideas. The new book is hackneyed, and so it goes. As you become more skilled, your Censor becomes more persuasive. Unless you are alert and strong, you will find yourself, like me, believing its assessments. And you might not be lucky enough to have a Joel Fotinos say, “You’ve been listening to Nigel.” If Nigel is too effete for you, picture your Censor as a cartoon serpent, slithering through your creative Eden, hissing vile and poisonous things at you. You wrote a good play? Your Censor will tell you that’s all there is. You drew a sketch? “It’s not a da Vinci,” your Censor will hiss.
If a serpent doesn’t accurately caricature your Censor, pick an image that does. More than one student selected Bruce, the shark from Jaws. Whatever you choose, put a big red X through it, and post it where you write. Just making your Censor into a cartoon character begins to pry loose its power over you and your creativity. One student turned her Censor into a nasty negative relative, Aunt Vicky. “There she goes again,” the student would exclaim whenever the Censor piped up.
Oftentimes, the Censor is a recognizable person—a parent, for example. An unflattering picture helps to downsize the Censor’s power. The point is to stop buying what the Censor is selling. Learn to hear it not as truth, but as a blocking device. Morning Pages teach you to do this.
“Julia, I’m not in the mood to write in the morning.”
Mood doesn’t matter. You will do some of your best writing on the days when you don’t feel like it, when your Censor tells you that it’s just plain junk. The Morning Pages will teach you to stop judging and just write. So what if you’re tired, cranky, under stress? Write three pages. Your Morning Pages are food for your artist child. Just as you would feed a newborn baby, feed your artist child. You do this by writing your Morning Pages.
Write three pages of absolutely anything. If you can’t think of what to write, write “I can’t think of what to write.” Keep writing until you have filled three pages. Three pages full of anything, anything at all.
“But, Julia, my pages are nonsense.”
Although our pages may seem like nonsense, they are performing a valuable function. They are getting us to the other side. The other side of what? The other side of our fear, our crankiness, our negativity. They get us past our Censor. Beyond our Censor, we reach our own voice. We reach a calm, centered voice, that is our Creator’s and our own. Some people conceive of Morning Pages as prayer. Others consider them meditation. I consider them both. They may not be the form of meditation you are accustomed to, but they are a valid form that will effect change in your life.
Morning Pages may begin as prayer. We realize that we have contact with a force greater than we are. “Okay, God, this is what I like, this is what I don’t like, this is what I want more of, this is what I want less of.” Soon they will drift over to meditation, as we listen to the Higher Power’s insights and suggestions.
Meditation gives us knowledge of our Higher Power’s will for us and the power to carry it out. We meditate to discover our rightful place in the scheme of things. This inner power has the ability to transform our outer world. In other words, Morning Pages give us not only the light of insight, but also the power necessary to effect positive change. It’s very difficult to write negatively about something day after day without being moved to action.
Insight in and of itself is an intellectual construct. Power by itself can destroy as well as build. It is only when we consciously link insight and power that we find our right place in the Universe. Think of Morning Pages like a ham radio set that allows you to contact the Creator within.
It’s another icy cold night. I turn up the heat and build a fire. Tiger Lily curls up on the hearth. I put on pajamas and a terrycloth robe. I’m still not warm enough. I get a blanket and curl up under it. Even so, it’s chilly. I retreat to my bed. There, under multiple layers of bedding, I keep writing.
“Julia, I’ve got a problem I don’t seem able to solve.”
Take your problem to Morning Pages. Pose your problem and then listen for an answer. You will “hear” from a source of wisdom greater than your normal consciousness. I often pose four questions to myself and listen for the answers. You are listening for a higher and wiser self. I suggest posing your questions to Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, or Glinda the Good Witch of the South from The Wizard of Oz. Any older, higher, wiser persona will do. Now, here are the four questions:
The answers to these questions often solve the problem you had no solution for.
I found myself in the uncomfortable position of still being in love with my ex-husband. I took this problem to the page and received guidance.
Question 1: “What do I need to know?”
The answer: “Loving is good.”
Question 2: “What do I need to try?”
The answer: “Acknowledge that you still love him.”
Question 3: “What do I need to accept?”
The answer: “Accept that you will always love him.”
Question 4: “What do I need to do?”
The answer: “Just love him.”
I found the answers wise and doable. I had been fighting my emotions, trying to not love him. How much wiser to simply love him.
You may wish to pose many questions in your Morning Pages. A favorite of mine is, “What should I do next?” It was this question that was answered, “You will be writing radiant songs.” Not likely, I thought, but I had learned to trust the wisdom of the pages. Sure enough, two weeks later, I had a head filled with melody. I was indeed writing radiant songs.
Most of us have a ceiling that we place on our creativity. We deem ourselves creative up to a point. Morning Pages may suggest we change the height of our ceiling. I, for example, believed that I was not musical. When pages suggested otherwise, I had to raise my ceiling. Now, I know that music is within my reach.
Sarah had a childhood dream of being a composer. This dream was drummed out of her in music school. She was schooled to be a performer, a talented performer. She took a master’s degree in Cello Performance. She helped found a string quartet. But all of her expertise left her unsatisfied. She began writing Morning Pages and the pages led her back to her dream of composing.
“I can’t,” she wrote, but her pages were insistent.
“Maybe I can,” she wrote.
And then, “I think I’ll try.” Tentatively at first, she composed children’s songs, songs about flowers and animals. Her success with them led her to try a musical. At this writing, she has composed six musicals, and is now at work on an opera. Her creative ceiling is far higher than she once believed.
Mark began Morning Pages with the dream of being a writer. When his pages suggested he write a book, he shrank back. “It’s too much, too hard,” he wrote initially. Then, he wrote, “Maybe I could try it and just not show anybody.” And so he launched into writing his book. When he finished a first draft, he screwed up his courage and showed it to a professional writer.
“It’s really good,” declared the writer. “Just polish it a little.” Mark did polish his book, and then showed it to an agent, Susan Schulman. To his amazement, she took him on as a client. She sold his book for a good price. Encouraged, Mark wrote book two and then book three. His Morning Pages were a companion and a catalyst on his creative journey. His creative ceiling was far higher than he once believed. A day at a time, a page at a time, he inched his ceiling higher. Pages challenged and encouraged him. His impossible dream of being a writer proved to be quite possible after all.
Morning Pages lead us forward by small steps. They convince us of our talent in tiny increments. “Wouldn’t it be fun to try . . .” they propose as a small risk. “Oh, I couldn’t,” we respond at first. And then, days later, we find ourselves daring to dream, “Maybe I could.”
Julianna began her Morning Pages living in an apartment in Los Angeles. She wrote daily about how claustrophobic she felt, trapped in a small box surrounded by other small boxes. She began to take drives, just to escape feeling smothered. The drives became longer, taking her north into the mountains. Only two hours north of Los Angeles, she found a mountain town that she fell in love with. It had fir trees and snow, real seasons, and bears, coyotes, ravens, and eagles. “I’d love to live there,” Julianna fantasized in her Morning Pages, “but it’s impossible.” An actress by trade, she needed to be in Los Angeles for auditions.
Or did she? It was a rare week when she had more than one audition. The two-hour commute from the mountains was quite doable once a week. On the page, her fantasy began to look practical enough to explore. Exploring, she found a house in the mountain town that she could afford to buy.
“I don’t dare,” she complained in her pages, and then, “I do dare,” she wrote. She bought her house. She moved to the mountains. “I credit Morning Pages,” she says.
It’s midnight and I am still awake, still writing. Tiger Lily sleeps near the fire, which crackles and pops. I add an extra log, then another. The fire has warmed up the living room, so I abandon my bed and go back to the leather loveseat. The fire sparkles. I write on.
“Julia, I quit my Morning Pages and my life fell apart. What should I do?”
Start the pages again. They will always “work.” I have a colleague that I taught with for several years. Recently I asked him if he still wrote Morning Pages. His reply? “I write them whenever I get in trouble.” Hearing this, I thought, “If you wrote them all the time, you wouldn’t get in trouble.”
Morning Pages are troubleshooters. They give us an early warning when trouble looms. They sharpen our self-protective instincts. Morning Pages make us better at our jobs. They improve the communication in our relationships. Let us say our lover is acting “funny.” Morning Pages will point this out and suggest a heart-to-heart talk. Morning Pages keep grievances from piling up. We learn to be current, first on the page, next in life. I’ve had many a husband and wife tell me their pages saved their marriage. “He/She is so much happier.” When I teach, I warn students the pages are contagious. Significant others may take up their practice. I will have the class I am actually teaching, and the “shadow” class of lovers, spouses, best friends, who are also doing pages. I sometimes joke that when I die, I will be asked by St. Peter what I did to deserve admittance to heaven. I will tell him, “I got people to write,” and the pearly gates will swing open.
“Julia, your book changed my life,” I am often told. I reply, “You changed your life.” It is impossible to practice Morning Pages without changing your life. The changes may be dramatic, or they may be quite subtle. But change you will. If you’ve been a doormat for other people, you will begin to speak up. If you have been a hothead, you will begin to hold your tongue. Pages adjust you in just the way you need. I call this practice “spiritual chiropractic.” You are brought to a point of balance. You become healthier psychologically. Noting this, many therapists have convened Artist’s Way groups. Practicing Morning Pages is highly therapeutic. Their clients heal. Lives are miraculously transformed.
“Julia, how can you be so certain that Morning Pages will work?”
At this writing, nearly four million people have bought The Artist’s Way and undertaken Morning Pages. This readership constitutes a great data bank. Overwhelmingly the vote is in: pages work. Remember that The Artist’s Way is called “a spiritual path to higher creativity.” The pages work because they are spiritual. They put the user in touch with a source of inner power. That source is the Great Creator. Miracles happen, because to the Great Creator, miracles are commonplace. Problems that loom as unsolvable to the human mind are child’s play to the Great Creator. Lives are changed, changed for the better, through the action of what we can call grace. Yet you do not need to be a believer for the pages to work. Agnostics and even atheists have used the pages to good effect. The late, great mythologist Joseph Campbell advised his students to “follow their bliss,” anticipating “a thousand unseen helping hands,” and doors that would open “where there were no doors before.”
So it is with Morning Pages. Students report an upsurge of synchronicity. They are increasingly in the right place at the right time. Coincidences—coincidences of a benevolent sort—abound. Mention a desire in the Morning Pages, and then encounter the means to fulfill that desire. Need a piano teacher? Find yourself seated next to one at a dinner party. (This happened to me.) Need a good attorney? Meet one at your gym. (This happened to my friend John Bowers, the novelist.) Working with Morning Pages, you become alert to signs and signals. They point the way to your path. Gradually, you begin to feel there is a benevolent “something” at work that is friendly to your goals.
“Julia, I simply can’t believe in a personal God.”
I don’t ask you to believe in a personal God. I ask you to experiment. Write Morning Pages, and you will eventually encounter a wise inner resource. You do not need to call this resource “God.” It doesn’t matter what you call it. What does matter is that you use it. Rely on the answers you receive when you pose a problem. That calm, firm inner voice can be depended upon. You need not think of it as divine. You may prefer to regard it as a function of what you call your Higher Self. No matter what you call it, count on it. It is reliable. You may have been raised to believe in a God that was fickle and capricious. If so, it’s no wonder that you can’t call your inner resource God. God has negative connotations for you. You may have been taught that belief in a God is laughable, foolish, even juvenile. If so, don’t contort yourself to believe in something you find unbelievable. Simply experiment and record for yourself your results.
The extra logs I added to the fire turned it into a blaze. I check the fireplace screen to make sure the fire is safely contained. I’m getting sleepy and Tiger Lily is, too. Tomorrow promises to be another snow day. I’ll continue writing then.
~
The ashes in the fireplace are cold. The fire gutted out in the night. I sweep the fireplace clean and lay another fire. The temperature outside is in the teens. Inside, the house is chilly. My writing room has a draft. I take up my place on the living room leather loveseat. Tiger Lily leaps up on a leather hassock. We both want to be near the fire—but not too near.
“Julia, I’m not a writer. Will Morning Pages still work for me?”
Yes. You do not need to be a writer to use Morning Pages. In fact, being a writer is often a liability, because writers expect their pages to be writerly. Pages work for painters, actors, sculptors. They work for people who do not consider themselves creative at all. Morning Pages move all of us into our creativity, and yes, we are all creative. Our very lives are creative. What color to paint the bedroom? A creative choice. What kind of car? Another creative choice. The curtains we choose, the breed of dog that appeals to us, our choice in flatware—anything and everything calls for our discernment. Moving our hand across the page, we notice these choice points. We craft a handmade life. Morning Pages tell us our likes and dislikes. They are precise. The more specific you are in your Morning Pages, the better you are at contacting the Universe, asking for help. This source needs to know precisely where you are and how you are feeling. Write, “I am twenty pounds overweight and I haven’t written in fifteen years.” That gives the Universe something to work on. Don’t write, “I’m a little heavy and I haven’t written in a while.” If you are vague, the Universe will be vague as well. Use your pages to record precisely where you are. The Universe will respond precisely. Students are often astonished by the exactitude of the help they receive. I am no longer astonished. I have come to expect such made-to-order help.
“But, Julia, my pages are so negative. I’m afraid I’m encouraging negativity.”
Stop worrying. As we ventilate the negative, we make room for the positive. Jungians call it “meeting the shadow.” I say it’s like meeting the shadow and taking it out for a cup of coffee. The pages listen to us as we gripe, grumble, complain, and kvetch. Nothing is too petty to mention. Eventually, a ray of optimism will pierce our haze of negativity. We will catch ourselves thinking “maybe I could try that” about a small risk. Risking, we begin to respect ourselves for our courage.
A student in her mid-fifties was afraid to try Morning Pages. She yearned to be a writer, but she was afraid to write. I coaxed her into writing Morning Pages. “You can always get a therapist if it gets too scary,” I told her. Reluctantly, fearfully, she put pen to page. As she did so, the dam broke. Ideas for plays and short stories flooded her. She began to write them down. Six months into writing her pages, she won a playwriting contest. As I write her story, she is now an award-winning playwright. All she needed was the courage to begin. She was more than brave enough to continue.
Morning Pages ask us to have courage. When we do, they give us positive reinforcement. On an “off” day, we can still tell ourselves, “At least I did my pages.” Most days, we can count some small forward motion. Pages lead us to large changes by very small steps. Let us say we are led by our pages into trying our hand at a book. Pages will coax and cajole us through a first draft. Then they will help us to polish it. Next, they will suggest we try finding an agent, and will give us just enough courage to mail off the manuscript. With pages as our companion, we have enough self-worth to take actions on our own behalf. Pages are our mentor. They coach us along like a fighter.
I’ve been writing for two hours. The fire gutters low. Tiger Lily edges closer to the hearth. She’s chewing on an elk bone. It goes click-click-click against her teeth. She is patient, gnawing the bone down to the delicious marrow.
I, too, want to get to the marrow. Pages are often succulent and sweet to the taste. When we first undertake them, we may be astonished by the sheer number of things we feel bad about. As we write our “Mourning” Pages, we draw to the surface pain we had long repressed. Just counting our grievances, we come face-to-face with our own considerable resilience. There it is in black and white. We have survived a great deal. Sometimes pain at the hand of others, sometimes pain we brought on ourselves. We have survived our losses, and now we are ready to try surviving our gains. The pages begin to weigh in with positives. A month of slogging—pages of process and not product—and suddenly you have a breakthrough.
“I should try this, not that,” you suddenly think. Or, “I know how to fix the plot.” You may abruptly see a way you have long-sabotaged yourself—and see your way clear to ending it. Most delicious of all, you may suddenly conceive a new project, an undertaking in a direction you’d never thought of. For me, the new direction was music. Since being told I would “write radiant songs,” I have written three musicals and two children’s albums. I am studying piano—“teaching little fingers to play.” Each tiny bit of progress—“teaching little fingers to play more”—is thrilling.
Morning Pages may catch you by surprise. As you record what delights you, the answers may catch you off guard. I discovered a passionate love of flute music. I began listening to recordings by Tim Wheater and Carlos Nakai. Their plangent melodies gave wings to my imagination. I took a deep, heartfelt delight in their artistry.
Morning Pages awaken our senses. Music is more thrilling. Colors are more vivid. We notice and record our place in the Universe. We pay attention to our responses. “Jack bores me silly,” we may write, and then resolve to spend less time with Jack. “Sondra fascinates me,” we wax happily, and decide to spend more time with Sondra. No longer numb to our reactions, we begin to shape a life more to our liking. As we become more honest with ourselves, we are able to be more honest with others. True intimacy is born. We encounter others authentically. No longer vague in our likes and dislikes, we are more colorful. Others are drawn to us as never before.
When I teach, I sometimes joke, “Do Morning Pages and you’ll get laid.” The class laughs, but I am halfway serious. Those in relationships find themselves more wholehearted. Those who are single find themselves attracting new partners. I cannot give you a statistic on this matchmaking, but I can alert you to its possibility.
Whether partnered or single, students report that they have fallen in love—with themselves. Morning Pages invite intimacy. Intimacy invites tenderness. We catch ourselves heeding ourselves like lovers. Like lovers, we pay rapt attention. Listening to our hearts, perhaps for the first time, we begin to be our own loving companion. The pages are simple yet profound. We discover an inner voice that speaks to us with greater and greater clarity. We have heightened intuitions and inklings. “The still, small voice” becomes increasingly amplified. We are urged to take small actions, and as we do, we feel a sense of grace.
Morning Pages make us more graceful, but that grace is intensely practical. We are nudged to act on our own behalf, and if we balk, we are nudged again. The pages will nag until we are willing to take action. The pages inaugurate change, and they walk us through that change. We do end the bad relationship. We do get sober. We do lose unwanted weight. The pages gently mentor us through transformation. Increasingly, we feel secure.
One of the first fruits of our newfound security is an ability to take risks. We dare to broach a delicate subject with our partner. We dare to go back to college. We dare to submit an entry to a juried show. We dare, period, and as we do, our self-image shifts. Instead of procrastinating and beating ourselves up for our lack of courage, we risk and start to congratulate ourselves on our daring. We affirm a new positive identity.
Morning Pages lead us out of our sorrow and into our joy. An unhappy lawyer becomes a happy author. An unfulfilled entrepreneur becomes a fulfilled life coach. Of course, not all practitioners change careers. Many students report finding a deeper satisfaction in the careers they are already in. Put simply, Morning Pages put us in touch with our need for change. Some need more radical change than others. Pages adjust us to the precise degree we need adjusting. It is as though the pages are customized for our particular needs. Of course they are. Writing the pages, we forge a one-on-one, personal relationship with the Great Creator. In return, we are guided very specifically. As we become more honest with ourselves and our maker, our maker is able to act more and more accurately on our behalf. Moving our hand across the page, we touch hands with the Great Creator. God’s hand moves through our own.
So start with three pages of longhand morning writing. State exactly where you are. Do this daily. “I’m awake and I’m tired.” “I dreamed I was in an airplane crash but I survived.” Every morning, no matter how you feel, tell your pages how you feel. Think of your pages as a daily sign-in. Let them become a habit for you. Allow yourself to be honest, and let honesty, too, become a habit.
Write your pages daily and become open to their suggestions. Each day, you will make a small soupcon of progress. Maybe the pages will suggest you paint your bedroom. Maybe they will ask you to commit to twenty minutes daily at the piano. They might suggest you drink more water. Their comments will poke into every corner of your life. It is all for the good. Be willing to cooperate with their skillful mentoring. Allow yourself to believe a higher hand is helping you.
I have burned four logs as I wrote. The fire is guttering low and the flute music is sounding its final bars. Tiger Lily has retreated to the bedroom and curled up there on a sheepskin throw. It’s past midnight, and I am winding down for the night. In the morning, I will do my pages.