Morning pages
The idea of Morning Pages has been floating around my internet-space for a while now. I've always been intrigued by it but for some reason I've never tried it, even though I've read that it has been a really useful practice for multiple people. After reading some new posts about it (one of them from tiramisu) I've decided it's finally time for me to give it a try!
The idea of Morning Pages was originally proposed by Julia Cameron and consists of sitting down every morning and writing three pages of text. As far as I understand it doesn't matter what you write about as long as you just write. The suggestion is to put things down in a sort of stream-of-conscious style.
A quick search on the internet reveals that three pages are 750 words, but another page — by Julia Cameron herself — says one should write three 8.5x11 pages, which as far as I could understand is the same as an A4 page. I'm not an expert, but I think that I can fit many more than 750 words in 3xA4 pages. I guess it would be easy to find out if I took the time.
Anyway, I'll stick to the 750 words mark since I feel it's good amount and I know I can comfortably reach it within an acceptable amount of time. Another thing Julia Cameron says is to make sure to do them in the morning — hence the name. This might be a bit of an issue for me considering I have a small baby with which I want to play with in the morning before work.
The exercise itself — I think — is not that of just writing crap, which I can easily do in my own work notes (in which I often write much more than 750 words a day). It's more that of just learning to sit with your stream of consciousness, learn how not to get in the way and in so doing get to know yourself. It's going to be interesting and hopefully I can stick with it. I also won't be doing longform writing because — even though I love to write with pen and paper — it is much slower AND I like the idea that whatever I make gets backed up in a digital medium, it feels safer somehow1.
I think I'll write these notes mainly to myself. I kind of have the itch to write them in such a way that, if it is interesting, I can post it to my blog. But I don't think that will set the proper tone for me, since I'll try to — subtly — veer towards making publishable content. That is, it will likely impact how deep I'm willing to dig. On the other hand, that's exactly why I started blogging, as a motivation to write more and maybe share some of the stuff I feel. We'll see, I guess it's too soon to make a decision so I'll just do whatever feels right in the moment.
Even though my news-feed has been showing me lots of news about how a solar storm (that is expected to happen once every 100 years) could wipe out electronics (or will it just shut down the internet?) for a couple of months, so writing in an actual paper notebook is probably safer? Anyway, I don't expect anyone to read these notes, and I would also be surprised if I revisit them myself, so maybe the decision itself doesn't matter much.↩