I’ve been cleaning out my office. While going through drawers and file cabinets I’ve found many spiral notebooks. (Have I told you that I love spiral notebooks and steno pads and all sorts of office supplies?)

I’ve found lot of notes from  writing conferences, snippets of ideas and character sketches, and most of all, years and  years of morning pages.

Morning Pages are Julia Cameron’s main tool for kick starting your creativity and moving you closer to your writing goals. Write three pages every day. She says to write them in longhand, which I usually do, and write them first thing in the morning, which I do some of the time.

I do understand that when you do them first, you can get all the chatter out of your mind and free up your creativity. When you do then toward the end of the day, you are rehashing the day. Either way, I find benefit in writing the pages.

As I’m reading back over them, I’m re-experiencing various phases of my life. Some remind me of good times. A lot are reminders to  be grateful for all I have and have had. However, some remind me of the tough times I’ve been through (and survived).

Reading them over evokes a wide range of emotions. There’s joy when I read about trips I’ve taken and adventures I’ve had. There’s frustration when I see myself working too hard for someone else’s goals. There’ a sense of futility or triumph when I read about the trials of child rearing. (If we knew ahead of time what awaited us, would be ever have children?)

Now my biggest question is what to do with them.

Please leave a comment and answer these burning questions!

Do you or have you ever written morning pages?

Have they helped your creativity or your life?

How do you store your pages?

Do you ever re-read them?

What should I do with mine?

Write on,

Lynn

buy levitra per pill style=”font-size: 0.8em;”>Image via Wikipedia

January has slipped away (or almost, depending on your time zone). Are you on track with your writing goals? Have you totally given up on your new year’s resolutions? Do you feel as if you are totally underwater and swimming against the current?

By January 15^th, most new year resolutions are history. Don’t let this happen to you.

While working with a client today, I heard stress in her voice. She said that she was feeling overwhelmed about all that she had to get done. The more she talked, the more frantic her voice became and the more her sense of overwhelm came through.

I gave her a series of steps to help her break things up into manageable chunks and think about all of them at once.

Here are the steps I took her through.

› Continue reading…

 

Image via Wikipedia

We all have times when life interferes with our plans.  Sometimes it seems that everything goes wrong at once. That really throws off your writing schedule.

Lately, my life has had far more downs than ups. I have family members with severe medical crises on both sides of the family. The holidays didn’t help me keep my schedule either, but because of the circumstances, I ignored them for the most part.

Everyone is out of the hospital now. (At least as of this very minute.) Still, there are three or four of my family members who will never truly be well again.

I’ve come to some realizations lately. The most important is that writing keeps me sane.

We lose sight of the need to care for and nurture ourselves in the middle of all the chaos. We can’t care for others until we take care of ourselves.

Writing help me stay sane when things go wrong by…

› Continue reading…