Clearing the Stream: A Practical Guide to Morning Pages.

What the practice is

Morning pages are three handwritten pages, written first thing in the morning, before coffee and before the phone. Julia Cameron described the practice in The Artist's Way in 1992, and the instructions have not changed since. You write whatever is in your head until three pages are full, and then you close the notebook.

Most people take about twenty minutes. The pages are not a journal entry and they are not meant to be good. They are a place to put the thoughts that would otherwise follow you around all day.

What you need

You need a notebook you do not care about and a pen that moves easily. A cheap spiral notebook is better than a nice one, because a nice notebook makes you want to write well. Keep both beside the bed so that you can start within a few minutes of waking.

Handwriting matters here. Typing is fast enough that you can keep up with your own editing, and the point of the practice is to get ahead of it.

How to do it

Sit up, open the notebook, and start with whatever is there. It may be a complaint about how you slept, a list of what is due today, or a conversation you keep replaying. Write it down as it comes and keep the pen moving. If you run out of things to say, write "I have nothing to say" until something else arrives, which it usually does within a few lines.

Do not fix spelling or go back to cross things out. When the third page is full, stop, even if you are in the middle of a thought. Close the notebook and do not reread what you wrote. Nobody else reads it either.

Where it goes wrong

The most common problem is time. If twenty minutes is not available, write one page instead of three, and keep the same rule of not stopping. One page every day does more than three pages twice a week.

The second problem is judging the pages. Some mornings they are petty and repetitive, and that is normal. The same worry may show up for nine days in a row. When it does, you have learned something useful about what is taking up room in your head.

The third problem is rereading. Going back over old pages turns the practice into a record you feel you have to keep up. If you want to keep a journal, keep one separately.

What changes

Most people notice the difference after two or three weeks. Worries that have been written down once tend to come back less often during the day. Decisions get easier because you have already argued them out on paper. The practice pairs well with a sit by the water afterward, because there is less left to think about by the time you get there.

The full practice, with its steps and timing, is on the Morning Pages page.