I decided to try Julia Cameron’s morning pages practice for a week. For those unfamiliar: you write three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing first thing in the morning. No rules, no judgment, just… write.

Day 1

This feels stupid. My hand hurts. Why am I doing this? Coffee. Need coffee. Okay, what else… my dreams were weird last night. Something about a library that was also a grocery store?

Day 3

Getting easier. Still feels a bit pointless, but there’s something meditative about it. Like I’m clearing out the mental clutter before the day starts.

Day 5

Had an idea for a story this morning. Not during the pages - after. Like the act of dumping everything out made room for something new to arrive.

Day 7

Okay, I get it now. The pages aren’t the point. The clearing is the point. The practice of showing up and putting words on paper, even when you don’t feel like it, even when they’re terrible - that’s the point.

Will I keep doing this? Maybe not every day. But I understand now why people swear by it. There’s something powerful about writing before the day gets its hooks in you, before the world tells you who you need to be.

Morning pages are writing for yourself, by yourself. No audience. No purpose. Just pure practice.

And practice, it turns out, matters more than I thought.