WTF Are Morning Pages?
WTF Are Morning Pages?
And why am I doing them?
For a few months now, I’ve been posting my to-do list every morning and night on Instagram stories.
I work for myself1and I have a tendency to feel like if I didn’t do Every Single Possible Thing That Needs Doing, I haven’t done anything. It’s terribly toxic and I’m trying to be kinder to myself, and a daily plan and a nightly recap has softened my view of myself: I do my best, and the rest can usually wait.
At the top of my daily list — something I’ve rarely skipped for the past few months — are Morning Pages.
Which has begged the question:
I’ve been positively inundated with variations on that question (six people have asked me), so today…I’m going to answer.
Morning Pages are what they sound like: pages you write in the morning. Three of them, to be exact. No plan. No self-editing. Just yourself, some paper, and a pen. Or a pencil, if you’re into that kind of thing.
They’re a major component of The Artists’s Way, a book by Julia Cameron that walks “blocked creatives” through a 12-week creative recovery process.
I’ve bought and donated at least 10 copies of The Artist’s Way without ever getting past the first week, but then I listened to this podcast episode, bought what was possibly my 11th copy of this book, and got to work.
What you write is not the point.
The point is to physically write for three pages as soon as possible in the morning. Before you check your phone. Before you check your to-do list. Before you start your day and your time and thoughts all belong to someone else. It’s like cleaning out the junk drawer of your mind every morning, making the space for something else.
The first few days, writing three pages was absolutely excruciating. It took me an hour, because I was doing exactly what I wasn’t supposed to be doing: I was self-editing, pausing to think about what was worth writing down, trying to find a thought instead of just letting the pen move over the paper.
It is one thing to read that it can be three pages of pointless garbage, it is quite another to loosen your rigor mortis grip on perfection and let yourself write pointless, useless sentences that you are then instructed to not look at.
I. Hated. It.
But I kept doing it. I went through two legal pads and then cracked open a new notebook. And 10 weeks in, I wake up and reach immediately for that notebook and close it feeling like I have swept the cobwebs out of my brain. And while there are parts of The Artist’s Way that aren’t for me2, the Morning Pages definitely are.
Even without re-reading them, I have noticed patterns emerging and clouds parting. The spark is coming back, and the path forward seems clearer than it was before. I didn’t embark on this for a breakthrough, but I got at least three of them (exciting!).
This feels different to me than journaling, perhaps because the point is not to document anything in particular. It really does feel like a trash compactor for my thoughts. I've won’t be putting these pages on my shelf (or in a box with my old journals) I’ll be dropping them into the fire pit and letting them go.
Then I’ll sit back down the next morning with my favorite pens, a fresh new notebook3, and start again.
xo
Nora
Elizabeth Kott — the reason I even did The Artist’s Way — hosts a guided group called Club Artist’s Way, and her next one kicks off in 2025.
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If you want to do something good to ease your anxiety, this is a teacher trying to outfit her special needs classroom. The main need is around $600 and I’m pretty sure we could raise that pretty quick. I’ll match the first $100 and you can Venmo me (@noraborealis) if you want to contribute. Let’s make her year!!
The October Reading List is here!
Have you made your Dopamine Menu?
Follow TTFA Anthologies for themed 10-episode seasons of some of your favorite TTFA topics. Spotify | Apple
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my boss is a bitch
which is fine! Normal! Take what you like and leave the rest!
you don’t need a new notebook, Nora!!!! Nobody does! But because I bought these in 2022 so I’m really just using old notebooks that are technically new (unused). Some of these links are affiliate links which means that if you buy the item the seller pays me a small commission.
My wife struggled on and off with morning pages.
She was gifted The Artist's Way from my mother one year - her request, not my mother's idea.
In fact, she was an amazing and brilliant writer, but morning pages is a harsh mistress and my wife was no disciplinarian, self-described.
Even with five years to prepare, we never really said goodbye, and never discussed very much outside of what was immediate; the endless carousel of medical processes and making her quality of living as good as it could possibly be.
Her MP notebooks remind me of all the words she'll never say; her voice on those pages, unheard. Words I might or might not ever hear in another version of our story where she lives and we grow old together.