Does anyone else do Morning Pages?

[morningpages]

Feeling curious about how others do this and what benefits they’ve noticed, if any.

After years of being on and off with the practice I started in earnest in March this year and have been fairly consistent with it. I set a timer for 15 minutes and empty my mind onto the pages without giving it much thought but don’t reread until the notebook is full. It’s definitely helped me directly with writing, I never have writer’s block anymore, but I think indirectly it has been good for my mood and creative confidence in general.

I have done in the past, but never that consistently. You’d recommend trying it every day then? I do find it helpful as a bit of a brain dump when I’m feeling overwhelmed.

Definitely recommend! There’s something magical about the repetition. That probably applies to everything in life but I found it helped me uncover ideas and ambitions that had been lurking in the back of my mind for years and a very definite yes to helping with the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Tell me more (I love routines), what time do you usually do them? As in, right when you wake up, or after breakfast etc?

I'd love to get into this practice but it doesn't feel compatible with term time mornings.

I love routines too! I am addicted to a website called famouswritingroutines.com, it’s endlessly fascinating.

My preferred way is almost very first thing, with a coffee, but sometimes I have to do it later because once I’m out of bed the day starts gathering its own momentum. I’m going to try doing it in bed before I get up, it could be quite a good way to capture dreams.

I write the date and time at the beginning and set a 15 minute timer via Siri then spill whatever’s in my head. Sometimes there’s nothing much in there so I’ll describe the coffee cup or what I can hear or the view from the window or whatever. Some people disapprove of free writing type exercises but it’s helped me a lot. Would be good to hear how it goes if you try it again.

I don’t see why it has to be a daily practice to be useful, it could be a weekend or even just a Sunday morning thing.

No. I write novels for a living, but the utter mindless drivel that spews out when I have tried morning pages just depressed me. It read like the drowsy ravings of an intellectually subnormal hamster having mild hallucinations.

Im sure it’s great, I just can’t do it.

When I do it it’s usually once the children are at school and I’m at my desk. I work very flexibly, I appreciate taking personal time in the office isn’t an option for most people!

@MissesMorkan when I first tried MPs over 20 years ago the idea was that you did them before starting to write for the day. I found that after 3 pages of drivel I was done and could absolutely not start on anything else after that. When I do them now it’s kind of an undirected journaling if that makes any sense, writing about what stresses me or just any old nonsense. It’s cringeworthy and I periodically destroy any such writings lest they fall into the wrong hands!

I write for a living too but I’m a 👻, although I am working on my own series of novels in my spare time. I used to be a very self conscious behind closed doors kind of writer, but I don’t worry so much about someone peeking in the morning pages. My handwriting is impossible to read!

Oh, I’m the only one who could read my drivel — my handwriting, even when wide awake, is godawful.

What kind of thing do you ghost? My DH, when he worked in sports representation, was in awe of the unruffled tempers and professionalism of the ones who wrote some footballers’ memoirs from unpromising material.

For me i’s not the content of the morning pages that is interesting or valuable but the effect it has upon the rest of my writing life. Maybe it’s a placebo.

I don’t read what I’ve written in mp until months later, I write and turn the page when I’m finished with each entry so I never see what’s there when I come back the next day.

No one would be interested in reading my old morning pages, it’s more a ‘what if I get hit by a bus and this is how I’m remembered’ cringe 😂 I chucked the latest batch in the recycling last week.

I don’t do memoir but other long form nonfiction which appears online under some ‘expert’s’ byline. It’s not remotely what I imagined when I dreamed of growing up to being a full time professional writer, but it is normal to need a day job isn’t it.

Are you a full time novelist?

Oh god what a thought! It would be like being naked in public.

No, I teach creative writing at a university.