OK. This is about 'morning pages'. It's really drafty, different versions of the same thought bolted together. Pre-editing. A demo. You can tell from the repetition. But, what the heck. Put it in the world, fix it in post.
I started doing Morning Pages during lockdown. That phase when we were allowed out of our houses but weren't allowed inside anywhere else. Though, if you were lucky, you could sit outside a cafe. And there was an Italian cafe, about 20 minutes walk from our flat where I could sit and sip a cappuccino.
So I would wrap up in too many layers and head out every morning. I was really after the exercise. I wanted to walk but I find walking for its own sake really difficult, I need a destination. Coffee provided that. And then once I got there I didn't want to just stare at my phone, work was all-screen, all-day at that point and I wanted an escape. So I made up a 'practise' based on half-remembering what Oliver Burkeman had written about Julia Cameron’s idea of Morning Pages.
Sitting with my cappuccino, every morning, before I looked at my phone, I would write, longhand, in a notebook, three sides of A4.
It usually took me about 20 minutes and ended up being about 400 words. I write quite big. It wasn’t designed to appear anywhere. It wasn’t even for looking back on. And the main task was just to keep writing, to keep the pen moving. If I couldn't think what to write I would describe the coffee or note down the conversations around me.
It sounds very banal but I found it incredibly useful. It seems to loosen something in your brain. Just keeping the pen moving makes it easier for words to come out, things at the back of your mind, that you're only dully aware of, trickle down your arm and drip onto the page.
The painter Victoria Cantons, describes her painting practise as ‘a way to clear the drainpipes’. Morning Pages felt the same. It combined really well with the 20 minute walk and the coffee. I would slink out of the flat preoccupied with last night’s issues and the loomings of the day. I would walk, caffeinate and scribble and stride back home with a straightened spine and some solutions.
(To be clear, none of these solutions were about splitting the atom on painting another Guernica. They were how to phrase an email or the order to do a presentation. The small creativity of everyday life.)
One of the things you learn is that there’s no such thing as ‘having nothing to write’. Some mornings, many mornings, you’re just forcing yourself through the slog of writing. You’re just sitting there describing the sound of a mostly empty house or noting how your elbow has a small ache. And the sheer act of thinking and writing tips you into a felicitous phrase or an observation. It’s like your unconscious is an old storage unit you’ve been forced to explore and you come across something interesting. Or at least something you’ve forgotten about.
I've since read Julia Cameron's book The Artist’s Way and I think I'm roughly doing it ‘right’. She says it’s “Three pages of whatever crosses your mind—that’s all there is to it. If you can’t think of anything to write, then write, “I can’t think of anything to write …” Do this until you have filled three pages. Do anything until you have filled three pages.
She’s very keen that you never skip a day, never show them to anyone and try to do them in the morning. That all makes sense. But it's most important that you just do it. Remember: dailyish. Don’t let the broken streak become the enemy of the doing.
Try this:
White daily is a in a notebook. As early in your day as you can. Life permitting. Do three pages of A4 or some amount which is a bit more than comes easy. You’re trying to flush out the front of your mind and to pay attention to the stuff at the back.
Or take your notebook out into the world. If you’ve got a spare 20 minutes take yourself out somewhere. A bus stop. A cafe. A library. Sit with your notebook and just write stuff down. Make notes about what’s around you. Describe the decor or the atmosphere. Explain the queuing system. Listen to what people say. Write it down verbatim and notice how it’s completely unlike the dialogue in movies. Wonder why that is. Try and think of the right word to describe the smell of the drains mingling with the chip shop next door.
If you’re really stuck, if you feel like there’s ABSOLUTELY NOTHING out there to note just start writing down the random stuff in your head. The quotes, bits of song lyrics, catchphrases or odd bits of corporate language all of us just seem to carry around. You are my sunshine. Into the valley of the shadow of death. Out of the black and into the red, nothing in this game for two in a bed. If nothing else the pen is moving, the ink is flowing. And, eventually something will pop up. Some tiny thing will spark something else and you’ll feel like you’re not just copy and pasting from your filing cabinet.