Spitting it out

I've been doing the 'morning pages' exercise from The Artist's Way (Julia Cameron, Pan Books). Maybe I should say "again" because I've been on this path a few times before when I've needed to get unstuck creatively and psychologically. Technically morning pages are a writing excercise with the following rules:

• Every morning, soon after you wake up, write three long-hand pages in a journal.
• Don't think about what you're writing, just write, stream-of-consciousness style, until you've filled up three pages. No cheating with a tiny little note pad!
• Don't read what you've written. 
• Don't show it to anyone else. 
• Do it every day, whether you feel like it or not.

This time round, I've got the morning pages in my laptop, in Word, with the font size set so one page of single spaced text with no paragraph breaks is 750 words. I start with the date, note the time, and write until I've filed the page, note the total word count and time, save and shut the file. If I don't agonise, edit, or think too much, it takes roughly 17 minutes, so not a massive time suck.

Some good things are happening. I'm looking forward to getting up and writing every day. I feel no anxiety, no struggle to stay focussed, no burning impulse to vacuum or clean the windows before I get started, or half way through. And I'm feeling no pressure or block. I am writing, and it feels bloody great! Yay.

And not only that; I've been motivated to do my own writing again. A couple of times this week I even woke up thinking about story ideas for my blogs. This is massive. For the past year or so I've been waking up thinking about some work problem. Usually it's a writing problem because that's what I do for a job. More often than not, when I wake up properly I realise it's an imagined, not a real problem, but it hangs around, whining and bothering me, and stopping me from actually working, or ensuring the work I do feels like agony. It's also exhausting, so I've had no energy  for creative writing either.

But as I said, a couple of times this week I woke up with story ideas in my head. It is a much better day when I wake up feeling interested, motivated, excited to get up and write. A much better scene altogether!

So what's going on? I think the morning pages are a bit like housework. It's like I go into my brain every morning, and clean it out -- throw away rubbish, wipe up dust and grime, put stuff in its right place so I can find it when I want it. Wipe the benches, run the dishwasher, pick up clothes, do the laundry, take out the garbage, sort out that junk cupboard, give some stuff away. Think of all those things that make your house nicer to be in. When you don't do them, everything's harder, more stressful, a drag.

The morning pages are my brain's housekeeper, keeping things in order so I don't have to navigate around chaos and clutter when I'm working. These days I'm more likely to sit down to work feeling fresh and clear. A bit virtuous even, just like I feel when my clothes are picked up and the kitchen sink is sparkling.