How Morning Pages Can Make You a Better Writer

Writing can be a chore for me. With that in mind, I started a new morning ritual called “morning pages.” Morning pages is a writing exercise devised by Julia Cameron and popularized in her book, The Artist’s Way.

The morning pages exercise is designed to help you recover (or discover) your creativity and silence what Julia calls the Censor. The Censor is that critical inner voice that criticizes each and every word you write and makes it brutally painful for you to write anything.

“The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery. As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly. Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never do enough and what we do isn’t right. We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth…The point is to stop taking the Censor as the voice of reason and learn to hear it for the blocking device that it is. Morning pages will help you to do this.”

Interestingly, one of my clients wrote to me this morning after reading about my struggle with writing. She said, “I really did think that writing came so naturally that you had no problem putting pen to paper, and the words just flowed out of you. That’s a wake-up call for me.”

I think the same thing when I read other people’s writing. I think writing must be so easy and natural for them, when in reality, that’s likely not the case. It’s very possible they struggle with writing nearly as much as I do.

So this morning, I tackled morning pages. My first reaction … writing longhand feels awkward. By the time I’d finished, my elbow was burning with pain. I contemplated whether to just type my morning pages, but I think I’ll stick with longhand for a bit to see how it goes. It’s probably like starting a new exercise routine. Initially, it’s painful and feels unnatural, but as you continue to do it, it’s gets easier. I’m hoping it’s the same with morning pages.

Besides, there’s something to be said for exercising a different part of the brain. Neuroscience tells us that the human brain is highly plastic, meaning that when you undertake a new activity, such as writing, it physically changes in response.

So as I continue to write longhand, new neural pathways and connections are being created in my brain, and that seems like a valuable part of the growth and development process to me. It’s like the starfish that can regenerate a severed limb. Only I’m regenerating parts of my brain. And becoming a better writer in the process. Hopefully. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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By Michael D. Pollock

Michael D. Pollock is a behavior change coach and writer who helps people break stubborn patterns, rebuild self-trust, and create lives that reflect who they truly are. His work explores the intersection of habits, identity, psychology, neuroscience and deep personal change.