Morning Pages: The Hated Healer (Jan 18, 2010)

Sitting down to do Morning Pages is like having a meeting with someone I dread. Nothing this person is going to say will be cheerful -- they always complain and say nasty things about life. Things won't get better, they'll get worse. Sure it's sunny now, but bad weather's coming. You're going to do WHAT?! Good luck with that.

Trouble is, the person I meet during Morning Pages is inside of me. It's the meeting with that ugly, gloomy, hateful part of myself that I dread. Well, that and the fact I generally write before breakfast, which is its own problem -- I'm hungry!

I don't want to come in here and listen to it dump bad scary things on the page. Worries about my future, regrets about my past, feelings associated with the perceived inadequacies of my abilities and talents. But when I do, which I ought to do every day, I find that all that muck tends to stay behind, stay here on the page where I put it. It's not so prevalent in my mind, doesn't hang around quite so intensely to cloud my thoughts during the day.

I recommend Morning Pages to everyone, artist or not. Three full pages (both sides!) of longhand writing done in the morning, or, presumably, whenever your 'morning' is. If you wake up at 10 pm to get ready for a night-shift job, that's your morning. Get up at least half an hour earlier and sit down with pen and notebook. It doesn't have to be good, or even make much sense. Get all that crud out of your brain so it won't be so pesty later on in the day.

I bought a scary, neon-green 3 subject notebook for my last Morning Pages book, and I've taken to writing in it with green ink. I hate doing Morning Pages, so I tend to want the most horrible book I can find, yet I'm cheap, so I want the least expensive for my money as well. Therefore I hit dollar stores a lot for this purpose. I had it in my head to go to Staples and buy a pack of their shrink-wrapped notebook packets - five or six single subject notebooks for cheaper than you'd buy them singly. So I went to Staples, expecting to find the wide-ruled notebooks they always sell that way, sadly, when my general preference is for college ruled. "This'll be perfect for Morning pages though," I thought, "since I want to write on wide rules for that. Less writing!" And so I was disappointed, in this particular backward way, to discover my Staples store had in stock shrink-wrapped notebooks ... that were college ruled. Oh, the irony. I bought a single wide-ruled book, since my last one was college ruled and it took /forever/ to fill three pages of that thing.

Give Morning Pages a try. They'll help you clear your mind for your day. And yes, you may well hate them. A lot. But, as Julie Cameron says in The Artist's Way, that's a sign that you need to do them.

Writing With The Black Dog (Feb 1, 2010)

(This is a repost from the old VOX blog - apparently a few of those didn't make it to here when I migrated.)

"Writing won't banish depression. But depression doesn't have to banish writing. If you can manage to write through a depression, you will be in distinguished company. And you will very likely write something of worth."

-Susan Shaughnessy, Walking on Alligators

Many creative people suffer from some form of depression. The poet Byron referred to depression as "The Black Dog", as did Mike Wallace and Winston Churchill, but the phrase may have originated as early as Roman times. The idea of having 'a black dog on your back' has been around a long time, and it seems artists represent a large portion of the population of depressed people. Writing when depressed is very difficult. When you feel as if you're worthless, that you'll never succeed, that the future is a bleak and empty landscape with no light and no joy, it can be nearly impossible to put pen to paper, paintbrush to canvas. But it is possible to write through it.

This morning I found myself desperately wishing to avoid the day. I dozed off for an extra twenty minutes, then hopped out of bed to make up the time. I received a troublesome piece of news in the mail on Saturday (why do they always send them on the weekend?) and though I fought off the funk in order to enjoy my weekend, on Monday I'm reminded that the issues I ignored for two days are still there and still need to be dealt with. I wrote in my Morning Pages, despite not really wanting to, and discovered therein a silent, non-judgmental friend. I've written Morning Pages for many months but never had this sense of 'whatever you want to say, I'm here to listen' before. It was a great relief, and I finished all three pages and came up with a potential story idea to boot.

I'm a little puzzled by my success, though I'd never say I'd beaten the Black Dog. I don't think it's possible to 'beat' it. You have to learn to live with it, and each day typically brings a new struggle. But here I am, writing for my blog, when really I wanted most to just hide somewhere until the world got a little less scary. The world doesn't change, though; it's up to me to adjust my view and make plans to sort out my problems, where applicable.

That said, I'll point out it's easy to say such things when I'm feeling alright, like I am right now. I have a cup of hot tea and since WRTI is doing a membership drive (I'd love to become a member, but my money needs to go other places just now, guys, sorry) and therefore doing more talking than music-playing, I've got Gustav Holst's "The Planets" symphony in my earbuds. It's very nice. I just heard "Neptune, The Mystic" and now "Venus, The Bringer of Peace" is playing. I feel tranquil and content. The sun is shining and though it's frigid outside, it's comfy here in my study. I've pushed past the Black Dog and am letting him follow me, though not close enough to nip at my heels. Not now. Not today.