The Artist’s Way: Morning Pages

Because I work night shifts still, my schedule is often varied and upside down. I cannot claim to have a consistent morning routine—or even say where my “morning” officially begins and ends most days.

However, this is how I have chosen to approach Julie Cameron’s morning pages from the Artist’s Way, no matter what time I end up doing them:

1.      Start and End with Prayer: I could probably do several posts on how and why I do this, but for now I’m going to pretend it’s self-explanatory. ;)

2.      Read one chapter from the Book of Mormon: I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so for a while now, I have had a goal of reading one chapter from the BoM every day. I have incorporated this into my morning pages by starting my routine with prayer, reading the chapter, and then free writing a page about the chapter I just read. Often, I start by simply summarizing parts of the chapter, but ideally, I quickly transition to pulling out specific lessons and insights I had while reading and how I wish to apply it to my life.

3.      Read another verse of Scripture: Along with reading a single chapter of the Book of Mormon, there is usually a larger block of scripture I’m reading for our weekly Sunday School. I’ll listen to the audio version of those chapters straight through at some point during the week (right now it’s the Old Testament). But I also have a study app that pulls one verse from those chapters every day to focus on. So I’ll write another page based on that verse, and it’s interesting how often those ideas will flow together with the first page I just wrote.

4.      Write the Pages: After I have written those two pages, THEN I will do the three pages of free creative writing Cameron actually describes in her book. Sometimes I will still use a prompt to start out with—like the tasks listed in Cameron’s book or something else I have been reading or thinking about. But I allow myself to write whatever comes to mind. It often includes my goals, current stressors, story ideas, and affirmations all jumbled up together. These pages are not meant to be shown to anyone, so it’s okay if they are a mess (and mine frequently are).

5.      Guided Meditation and Moments of Stillness: My practice of this habit also includes guided meditation and moments of stillness that—again—could each be a blog post all by themselves.

The list above is my baseline, but since my schedule varies so much, there are a few days when I have a bit more time.

On those days, I have been including a few more pages:

1.      General Conference talks: I listen to two General Conference talks from our current church leadership every week and do a page for each (usually on Fridays).

2.      Draw: I’ll do a “drawing exercise” as another page three or four times a week. My sketches are pretty basic and not meant to be shared, but I have found ways for it to be a continuation of my meditative and creative time. Sometimes, I’ll try to draw something from one of my books, but mostly I’ll pick something around me or a picture off my phone to draw. Or I’ll do a page from an adult coloring book.

3.      Reset: On Sunday, I’ll add a page or two to reset for the week—reporting on how the week went and what I want my goals/focus for the next week to be.

Written out like this, it sounds like a lot. And yes, even my “baseline” pages take at least a half an hour to complete, but so far, I have been pleasantly surprised by the results. . .

More on that later!