Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Morning Pages Revisited

Ages ago, probably back before most of you, dear readers, were reading this blog, I talked about a thing called morning pages.  The post can be found here.

Today I want to revisit this because there's another reason for the morning pages.  They're not just for exorcising that inner critic.  Three pages of free-writing can certainly help get the negativity out.

For me, they've sort of started to become a diary of sorts.  I do my best to keep them from turning that way, but the events of the day before are usually what's on my mind in the morning.

That and all the stuff I have to get done on any given day.

They've also become a sounding-board for my WiP.  If I'm really struggling through a passage in Oracles Promise I find that my morning pages get filled with questions and musings about the story.

And the morning pages can become a repository for ideas.  This morning, I woke up and opened the notebook to write my daily three pages.  The entire first page is filled with descriptions of what I could remember from the very vivid dream I had last night.

I recorded the dream because it really and honestly could become the underpinnings of a novel sometime in the future.  It would take a lot of work to get the mythology worked out and get everything sorted in such a way that it no longer resembles the madcap wanderings of my sleeping brain.  But it could work.

That's why I write my morning pages.

Q4U: Do you do anything like morning pages ever?  Would you consider it?  Why or why not?

11 comments:

  1. I just did morning pages for the first time today! I hope this is a habit that I can continue for a lifetime.

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  2. I did morning pages years ago and it turned into a plotstorming/diary format. I stopped when life got busy. I have to be at work, ready to face 125 teenagers at 7AM so I don't think I could force myself out of bed any earlier to resurrect the habit.

    It was fun though!

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  3. Blogging is like writing morning pages for me. It gets me thinking about writing and forces me to get the gears turning in my head.

    And I'm so jealous of your dream! My dreams are always so random and never spark stories.

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  4. I have my family blog, but I don't write in it consistently anymore. So no... but what a cool idea!

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  5. I'm tackling revisions with a print-out of my draft and taking notes longhand. Not sure why, but I'm finding it much more productive than sitting in front of screen and keyboard...

    And LOL, it was fun to look back at your old post and see the original names!

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  6. Molly, good luck! It is so hard starting out to make sure you get them done each day. I still struggle with them.

    Stephanie, I hear you on the getting up early. There were a few days in November/December where I skipped the pages because of it.

    Roni, my dreams aren't usually like that. More often than not I don't remember anything about them when I wake up.

    Nisa, you have to do what you can do without losing your sanity.

    Deb, I write longhand because I can usually be more productive if I do. LOL about all our old screen names. Good luck with your revisions.

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  7. I love the idea of morning pages. I do it sometimes, but I'm not consistent, though. It's odd that you mention your dream last night. I also had a dream last night that I recorded this morning. It was about a thirteen-year-old. In my dream, I was playing the part, but it wasn't me. Definitely fodder for a future middle grade novel.

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  8. Susan, sounds like you had a productive sleep. Morning pages are handy sometimes. Other times they just seem like such a chore.

    Word to the wise: Choose your notebook very carefully when experimenting with morning pages. I chose one too big and it took an hour to fill three pages. I moved to a smaller one and now it takes 20-22 minutes.

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  9. I don't necessarily do morning pages, per se. I just ALWAYS have my notebook with me and when the thoughts strike, I write them down. So I sort of do all day pages. :D

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  10. LOL Windy. I'm always jotting things down all day, too.

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  11. I hope this is a habit that I can continue for a lifetime.

    Work from home India

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