Emma, who’d been busy as a bee for most of August, has a life changing epiphany.

Emma had had enough — August was turning out to be a ghastly month. Far too many days had been spent in bed with migraines. Her migraines were of the beastly sort — resistant to medication and lasting several days; she could barely look at a screen without wanting to throw up. Work had to be postponed.

Emma was a writer and, like most writers, needed a clear head to make a living. If she didn’t do anything useful today, she wouldn’t be able to keep her head above water in September. She dreaded to think about the state of her savings…

Not that she’d been dawdling on the days when she’d been out and about. But that had precisely been the problem: a chum had found herself in a pickle and Emma had volunteered to do the legwork. She’d barely been home (or at her desk) for the past few weeks: popping in just to have dinner (often around 10 pm) and crashing in to bed. Today was her first free day in weeks.

Emma sat up in bed. She could feel a fresh migraine coming but she was sick of lying down, hoping a nap will cure her. She would be partially — no, completely — responsible if she ended up having a headache today.

She’d actually gotten in at a decent enough hour last night but instead of going to bed early and catching up on sleep (her cheeky little niece had commented that Emma was starting to resemble a panda), had decided to bake coconut macaroons.

‘Why was I making them?’ Emma asked the bare walls of her studio apartment.

‘To show off,’ answered a peevish voice, inside her head, without hesitation.

Emma sighed. Her elderly neighbour had innocuously mentioned that she enjoyed coconut macaroons. She had been a kind and helpful neighbour and Emma had promptly decided to tackle making sugar-free macaroons after coming home.

And she had. It was almost mid-night before she got the macaroons to the correct level of sweetness and packed them neatly in an air-tight container.

Why had she felt the need to bake coconut macaroons in the middle of the night, when she could have just as easily done it after a restful night of sleep, she didn’t know. Every single one of the past few days had been spent in a similar fashion. She’d fritter away the day and end up accomplishing only the unimportant.

This would never do. Emma dragged herself out of bed and glanced at her alarm clock. It was almost a quarter past 10 am. As usual, she’d woken up at her usual time, 6 o’clock, because her circadian rhythm refused to adjust to her new, inferior sleeping habits.

Emma gave herself a mental shake. Moping wouldn’t help her save the day. She knew what she needed — the first thing to do, in any sort of crisis, was to make herself a strong cup of tea. Wasn’t caffeine supposed to be good for headaches? Or was it the other way around?

Resolutely ignoring the container of coconut macaroons, Emma brewed herself a cuppa and settled down at her desk.

Looking out the window for inspiration wasn’t likely to be useful; it was coming down hard. But with a hot mug cradled between her hands and nowhere to go, she just couldn’t feel bad.

It was the first day, in the past few weeks, when nobody was waiting for her to deliver something important or indeed do much of anything. She was expecting no one and no one had any expectations of her. If she wanted to, she could spend the whole day in bed.

But she didn’t want to. Emma took a grateful swig of tea, pulled her morning pages journal and set about fixing her life.

The journal looked forlorn: she’d abandoned her morning pages for almost a week now. The last few entries were sparse — filled with rushed paragraphs, not even close to the full three pages required of the practice.

Emma read her rushed thoughts captured on paper. Each progressive entry had become more frantic than the previous one, until she stopped writing altogether. She’d opened the journal to plan the day or at least find some solace and found nothing. Why?

Writing had always soothed her and yet, something had been missing over the past few days. Her system had failed her and Emma hated systems failure. She glanced out the window for some inspiration and remarkably enough it came to her.

Noting the date, Emma made a new entry in her journal.

Time.

She’d abandoned morning pages when she’d needed them most, because they required what she had precious little of — time. Thoughts of smart people buying back their time came to her. But there was something else too. A flavour to the problem that she was missing.

Emma was the self-reflecting and cautious type and yet…

Continue reading on Medium.

Not just the habit of choice of ‘creatives’.

It’s no accident that I decided to become a writer, in spite of my training in Engineering and Management, after doing Morning Pages every day for 3 months. I didn’t just flirt with the idea either; in a few months, I’d written the first draft of my novel during NaNoWriMo 2018.

There was a cause-effect relationship at play. Looking back through the reams of writing I did, I can trace my journey from self-doubt, confusion and fear to calm, clarity and, ultimately, determination to become a writer.

I was no stranger to writing; I’d started keeping a diary when I was about twelve years old, right after my mother got me The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. As the years rolled by, I didn’t keep a diary in the traditional sense, but wrote sporadically whenever something bothered me. Although I’d heard of Leonardo Da Vinci’s stream of consciousness writing, I had never expected my own scribbles to be remotely illuminating.

How very wrong I was.

What are Morning Pages?

What makes Morning Pages different from journaling is the structure and the freedom from structure. Morning Pages is a practice, for artists (that includes you), recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.

Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages- they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only.
– Julia Cameron

It’s structured practice: you must write 3 full pages in longhand every morning. But it’s also wildly unstructured- Cameron insists that there’s no wrong way to do Morning Pages, as long as you do them.

Initially, it’ll be hard to think of something to write about (3 pages!) and then a particularly juicy thought will come along, that needs to be expressed, and you’ll trip over your own words!

I’m a slow writer and have been doing morning pages for over two years now; I’m happy to report that the benefits were worth the upfront investment of time.

I suggest that you use the three pages to empty your mind- achieve tabula rasa. It’ll take a lot of writing to get there. Feel free to vent, curse, ruminate or brainstorm.

Continue reading on Medium.