by Kay Butzin
The day I wrote my first three morning pages, April 9, 1999, I was underemployed at a job I hated, smoking a pack of Winston Lights a day, ten pounds overweight, and depressed about the dust and clutter I’d allowed to accumulate in my one-bedroom condo.
The night before, I’d signed the Creativity Contract in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I set a purple ball point pen and a spiral notebook with three swimming dolphins on the cover next to the alarm so I wouldn’t be tempted to hit snooze and could, as the author recommended, “spill out of bed straight onto the page.” Familiar with the benefits of free writing from a grief retreat I’d attended after my husband’s death, I looked forward to establishing the daily habit. Yet the next morning, I resisted. I had to take my thyroid medication; I needed coffee; where were my cigarettes?
At some point on each page I admonished myself: Don’t stop writing!
By the third I was asking: Will this get easier? Will I really become superstitious about morning pages like the woman Julia quoted in the book?
I wrote on twenty-four of the first thirty days, sometimes before I cleaned the sleep from my eyes but not always. Sometimes I wrote fewer than three pages and sat staring out the window trying to think of things to write instead of putting pen to paper.
Now, fourteen years later, the answers to that first day’s questions are no and yes. I still struggle to keep the pen moving and not to censor first thoughts; but when I succeed, there is no better therapy and none cheaper. For seventeen cents each at the Wal-Mart end of school sale, I purchase enough spiral notebooks with covers in primary colors to get me through a year of scribbling about the issues of my life.
In 2000, I debated the pros and cons and made the decision to retire early.
In 2003, I worked up the courage to join the Rockport Writers Group, and this year I’m serving a second term as its president.
Also in ‘03 I quit smoking—the first time. Pages can work magic, but not the nose-twitching kind Elizabeth Montgomery performed on Bewitched. It took four years before I stopped buying and bumming for good and would even turn down a smoke when it was offered.
Ditto for dieting: last July I finally lost the ten pounds and so far have not gained it back.
The writing itself is a boring whine. The insights gained in analyzing me, my family, and every relationship I was ever in are not always apparent between the journal covers. Perhaps they occurred to me after I closed the book, or maybe I chose not to include details others might read some day. I’ve confronted angers and fears, processed grief, worked out the details of projects, and brainstormed ideas for personal essays and short stories. I’ve also managed to get the dust and clutter under control once in a while, but it doesn’t last. While I excel at establishing systems, I’m not good at maintaining either them or routines.
Yet I’ve stuck with the morning pages habit for all these years, sporadically at times and not always according to Julia’s suggestions; and I’m committed to keeping it up for as long as my mind and body hold out. Why?
Because I’ve learned that the only wrong way to do the exercise is not to write at all.
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