I don't want to tell anyone how they have to do Morning Pages. I bristle at that kind of direction and learn better from stories than directions. There's no one true way. Finding my process, habit, and technique have been part of the process. Rather than prescribe how anyone should do Morning Pages, I'm sharing some of what I do because because I like thinking about method, and maybe it will help someone discover their own way.
A guy I know is considering Morning Pages but not writing them yet. I get that. I took weeks working up to the idea before writing my first three pages. I felt unprepared to commit to daily practice until the morning of July 5, 2014 when curiosity overtook me and I just started writing. I needed those weeks of thinking and worrying, though at the time I kept thinking, come on, man, let's just go!
I'm an impatient person, especially when waiting on myself to rise to expectations. I'm impatient for results rather than devoted to process and practice. Beginning Morning Pages, I expected them to change my life. I was forty-six, miserable, suffering from a lingering disaster, furious, and frustrated. July 5, 2014, I woke, put pen to paper, and wrote three pages.
Not much happened.
That secret needs to be told. I'll say it again: Not much happened. Even today, after more than six years of daily practice, I woke, put pen to paper, wrote three pages, and not much happened.
Inspiring, right?
In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien tells of two guys fooling around in Vietnam during the war. The weather has been scorching hot and dry for weeks. A Native American guy, Kiowa, is teaching Rat Kiley a rain dance. When they finish, Rat looks at the sky, then asks, "so where's the rain?" Kiowa says, "The Earth is slow, but the buffalo is patient." Rat looks at Kiowa, trying to understand, then says, "yeah, but where's the rain?"
In 2014, I wanted Morning Pages to bring the rain. I did three pages the next day and the day after. No rain. Not a drop. I stayed confused and angry. I was not transformed. Not much happened. The Earth was really slow but this buffalo was impatient. The Earth is still slow. I'm only slightly more patient six years later.
I wondered then if I was doing it wrong. A year in, I pushed to create publishable things in my Morning Pages. I drafted a prose poem every morning for a couple months. I drafted a blog post each morning for a few months. I used November's pages in a NaNoWriMo attempt. Morning Pages just had to make something happen.
While I drafted some good prose poems, blog posts, and even got to 50,000 words one November, here's the part that seems like a killer: _there was no rain, I was not transformed, and not much happened.
Not much of what I expected to happen anyway.
The mystery of my Morning Pages is that expectation gets in the way. Progress comes only when I let go of the expectation of progress. Expecting Morning Pages to do one thing, I was incapable of accepting all that they were doing and had done. Not much happening turns out to be the primary wonder of Morning Pages. The good news is that Morning Pages revealed this to me. The bad news, it has taken me 2,352 days to come this far and I'm nowhere near enlightenment.
Your mileage may vary.
Today I wrote Morning Pages. Nothing much came of them. I talked through the pen and listened to what the pen's movement had to tell me. I began with the first thing on my mind, something my wife said last night, and let the act of filling pages work on me.
That's something happening.
Up top I said that I don't want to tell anyone how they have to do Morning Pages. Still, a few guidelines may be of use to someone like the guy I know who is trying to get started with the practice. Here are the basics:
- Write three pages first thing every single morning
- Write in private with few distractions
- Write by hand on paper
- Accept that nothing much happens
Practice and acceptance have carried me through the frustration of failed expectations. They allow Morning Pages to work on me mysteriously without me trying to understand all of how it works. I just keep writing.
I know how mystical and annoying all this acceptance and mystery may sound, so let me end with something practical. I've come this far after doing daily Morning Pages for years. In the beginning, I counted every day and set goals. Now, I just do them. I did them yesterday. I did them today. I'll do them tomorrow. The not-so-secret of Morning Pages is to just keep doing them. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If you can let go of expectations, do that, but I'm terrible at following that kind of advice and direction. Someone tells me to let go of expectation and gives me a great set of reasons why. I wait a few beats, then ask, but where's the rain? I rarely notice the gathering clouds, the dimming of the sky, or the first drop of rain. I'm standing in a downpour before I realize it has begun to rain.
Something happens from doing three pages this morning and the next, for this reason and then that, from holding unrealized expectations but still getting up the next morning to write again. I knock my head against the wall expecting to break through but instead soften my thick skull enough to realize the wall isn't in the way. It's not even a wall. There's open space ahead, a winding path paved in blank pages laid out one after another after another beyond what my eyes can see. I've mostly let go of my expectations of where the path may lead and am learning to just keep walking, to keep writing and see what happens. And all the while the rain falls down. Something is happening.
