...and on the gazillionth try, she succeeded

Ever heard of Morning Pages? First thing in the morning, every morning, you write three pages (8 1/2 x 11-size pages) in longhand of whatever comes to mind. You don't worry about neat handwriting or punctuation. You can make lists, you can whine and complain, you can plan and daydream, you can outline ideas, you can go from topic to topic and back again. The point is to keep your hand continually moving across the page until you've filled three pages.

Some call it Brain Drain or Clearing the Decks or Writing Warm-up or Free Writing or Pre-writing or Meditation on the Page. Others call it Hell on the Page because it's far harder to do than you'd think. Other than what's described above, there are no rules. Get a notebook you like, get a pen or pencil you like, start writing, fill three pages. That's it.

The obstacles often run along these lines:

• should I use lined or unlined paper?
• should I use a nice notebook and pen/pencil to write in even though it will primarily be dreck that comes out on the page, and isn't that a waste of paper?
• should I use a notebook and pen/pencil I don't really care about since it will primarily be dreck that comes out on the page even though I won't like using just any old notebook and pen/pencil?
• what if I can't think of anything to write?
• what if I don't like what I've written?
• what if I've come to the end of three pages and I have more to write?
• I'm not a morning person, can't I write these pages at some other time during the day?
• can I type my pages?
• can I come up with writing prompts and do more focused writing on topics?
• it takes as much as 45 minutes for me to write morning pages; do I really have to get up 45 minutes earlier to do this?
• I'm not a writer, I'm a painter/musician/dancer/sculptor/pilot/accountant/ executive/swimmer; isn't there some morning exercise I could do more related to my particular brand of creativity?

There are plenty more obstacles to this exercise, but these are the ones that come up most. Some are self-induced excuses. Some are fear of what might show up on the page. Some are just plain overthinking and making it harder than it is. The latter is a bad habit I personally have been trying to overcome for years - few people are more in their head and overthinking than I am.

I first came across this exercise when I was in college. I was at the bookstore, and saw a book called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I thought it was by Julia Margaret Cameron at first, since I was rather photography-obsessed in college, and I loved her photographs (still do, in fact), and it would make sense that she might write a book on creativity. When I looked through it, I realized it was a different Julia Cameron. It looked interesting, so I bought it.

Turns out, my photojournalism professor was also reading it. When I told her I had gotten the book, she thought it would be a great read for me. At the time, I was wrestling with an independent study project to learn Ansel Adams' zone system photography method - one of the best combinations of technical skill and creativity I've ever come across - and boy, was I thoroughly intimidated by it. She thought this book would help me work through my doubts/ bewilderments/frustrations with this endeavor.

I stumbled all over the morning pages thing right from the start. I couldn't get myself to do it on a regular basis, mostly due to the obstacles mentioned above, especially the last one. I was just in the process of changing my major from art to journalism, and didn't think of myself as a writer yet. Couldn't I take three morning photos everyday or something? At the time, three pages seemed like a lot of page to fill, and I often waited until I'd saved up enough to write about before actually doing a Morning Pages session.

Over the next 13 years, I'd start doing them again and then give up for long periods of time when I found I wasn't doing them regularly anyway. But I'd pick up the book periodically to re-read parts of it and get the urge to re-commit to Morning Pages because I liked the concept and the possibility of what it could do, although I still wasn't sure how to make it stick. In a way, it didn't help that the book author can do the pages in 15 minutes every morning, easy peasy, no fuss - it made me feel like even more of a failure at it. However, one of the lessons with this sort of thing, which is true of anything really, and particularly true of resolutions and goals, is that it is better to do them imperfectly than not at all. Each time you do it, it gives you a drop more power and momentum to do it again and do it a bit better. And even if a lot of it is dreck, gems appear, too.

Since I was re-committing to a morning routine of writing and exercise and cello practice this year, I thought it would be good to try Morning Pages again as a pre-writing exercise before diving into the story writing. I anticipated the usual resistance (see obstacles above)...but so far, none have appeared! I've gone eight days in row writing Morning Pages, which is better than I've done with any of my other revolutions so far this year. I'm writing in a plain-ish spiral notebook with a pen I really like. I'm averaging about 30 to 35 minutes to write three pages. Most of it is dreck - I whined so hard in the pages on Wednesday, the day I got really sick in the early evening. I actually look forward to writing the pages every morning. It's not feeling like yet another chore. Filling three pages doesn't seem so hard anymore. And I've already uncovered a gem - a reminder of a short story idea I had last fall that I set aside and forgot about.

I've no idea why it's working this time. And yes, I realize I'm only eight days into it (and we'll see if I'm still doing it at the end of the month), but my record in previous attempts was three days in a row before skipping a day or two. I can come up with a ton of speculations on this phenomenon (this is probably completely uninteresting to anyone reading this, but let me have my delight in success, okay?). The main possibilities are:

• I write more now, both for work and on my own, than ever before in my life, so I don't so much as blink at adding more writing
• I think of myself as a writer
• I've been working with the imperfection lesson for six months already with learning to play the cello
• I have a lot of dreck to get out of my head
• I'm more of a morning person these days
• I'm older, more experienced, maybe even overthinking a tad less than I used to and just plunging ahead with an action

Could be any or all of those or something else entirely. I don't really care. I'm doing the pages every morning with a fair amount of ease and little resistance. I'm not going to bother to analyze why.

Do you write Morning Pages or do something similar? Is it (ever) hard for you? What do you get out of it?