It’s been way over a year since I started writing Morning Pages as suggested in the course, The Artist’s Way. Three full pages are expected, written longhand in the early morning hours before the day gets under way. In all that time I may have missed only a couple of days of writing. I never thought I would be so drawn to write in my black and white marble notebook every single day. The writing has never been a chore and, in fact, as I come to the end of the third page I think of more things to write!
The author of The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron, writes that great ideas start to come forth by the middle of the second page of free thought writing, and this is true for me, too. I could be out of sorts when I start writing and by the time I’m plugging on the second page my pen is flying with thoughts.
The act of writing is art. When I first started journaling I hadn’t yet read the course. I was writing whatever came into my head, for a page if I was bored, for more if I had something to get off my chest. The marble notebook I began writing in had no lines for some reason. How I found that kind of notebook I have no idea. I must have picked it up for my boys when they were still in school. I decided I liked the idea of no lines and just wrote the words and marveled how they looked on the page. Then I began to write without wearing reading glasses I use. And that was interesting to me, how the words looked in the lines they made on the page. It was cool to me that I couldn’t really see the words the pen made, making it seem more like drawing than writing.
Then there’s the pen. While I write I need the pen nib, the ink flow, and the way it meets the paper to be just right. Many pages I wrote have three different types of pens until I got one that I enjoyed writing with. My favorite is my old Mont Blanc pen that my father gave me many years ago. Right now it needs an ink refill, but using it was like a ritual. The pen and pencil set came in a zippered leather case. I’d get out my notebook, open it to the fresh page, unzip the case and remove the pen from it’s elastic loop holding it in place, flip the lever to reveal the writing nib and go at it. Besides the fact that it’s a lovely instrument to write with, I remember my father when I use it.
While I write what pops into my head I get more ideas for this blog. I could be huffing and puffing in the Pages and while I’m writing I think to myself, could this be a blog post?
That’s what happened today and what I’m yapping about here now. I was thinking about the usual things and goings-on when it dawned on me that someday, if I keep these notebooks, my family will stumbled on them and read about who I am, was, whatever. Will they think, she’s nuts? Who knows.
It seems my mother’s father kept notebooks about his life in this country, in the late 1890’s I guess. He came from Greece as a youngster with his brothers and somehow ended up out west building the railroads. Interesting stuff I’m sure, but shortly before he died of a brain aneurism he burned his books. What was he thinking? I would have loved to read his words. I thought of the story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, who aged backwards. After his death, as an infant, his wife had her daughter read to her from the diary he kept and the how and why of what it was. That scene just made me think of my own writing in the Morning Pages.
Anyway, I don’t think my thoughts are as interesting as some, but they’re mine and that’s that.