What is Morning Writing?

Writing in the morning is basically a data dump from your mind onto a piece of paper.

Morning Pages

One startegy for doing this is to use Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages” excercise from her book “The Artists Way.”

Here is the structure:

  • Write 3 pages (more like 2 pieces of paper) each day without stopping.
  • Don’t judge what you write
  • If you need to write 3 pages of “I don’t know what to write” then do that
  • This won’t ever be shown to someone

Things You Might Want to Write About

Asking questions of yourself

A good coach doesn’t give you the answer. Rather, they pull the answer out of your. Try asking yourself some questions.

What are you grateful for?

Maybe you just want to write today about what you are grateful for…

C.R.A.P.

C.R.A.P. stands for Conflicts, Resistances, Anxieties, Procrastination…

What are your conflicts?
What are you resisting?
What is causing you anxiety?
What are you procrasitinating?

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How Do You Build a Morning Writing Habit?

For 10 years I have been encouraged to try practice and always found something that would get in my way.

This time I used a hack that I learned from a course called Tiny Habits where you create a new habit after an existing behavior.

Unless something unexpected happens, I feed my dog Madison almost (99% of the time) in the morning after I get up. Since I do this every day, I set up my writing habit to happen right after I feed her. This way, nothing else gets in my way.

As I watch Mads eat, I pull out my 2 pieces of paper and start to write. This usually takes me about 20 minutes. Some days I just write “I hate this…” 300 times. Other times it just flows. Either way, it doesn’t matter. No one is grading me.

If you have ever gone to therapy, about half of your appointment may be just venting before you are ready to move forward with addressing a problem. I have come to look at this as my ability to vent daily in a healthy way.

Coincidentally I started writing this blog is about the same time that I started this new Morning Pages habit. I find I lay out my fears and frustrations first thing in my day so that I hopefully don’t let them run amuck.

Think you will give this a try?