Morning Pages for the Writer

If one thing is vital to a writer's day, it is the morning pages. It helps absolutely. Whether you call it Morning Pages, or Novel Diary, it jump starts a writer's day. In the morning when you haven't primed yourself up yet, and you are groggy from sleep, you need this.

I've been practicing writing the Morning Pages, and it has worked wonders. I get more easily and quickly attuned to a writer's mindset. I get focused in what I need to do during the day. I can make a link with the previous day's work, and then continue from there.

Just as a journal can be useful to any person, these pages are useful to a writer. I am a living proof. They are even more needed after a weekend, when I don't write, to go back to the working mode. I forget my work during the weekend, which I devote to my family. So, getting back to work on Monday is a bit tough.

I have to orient myself to the stream of thought. I have to pick up from where I'd left. The novel's complexity comes back when I delve deep into myself, and that I can do when I write my pages.

Writing before the Week Ends

“It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.” - Robert Hass




I have always had this question: should a writing career be shaped like any other? People work all week, and then take rest at the end of the week. Any kind of writing should be out of bounds during the weekend - theoretically.

Over the years, I have come to realize that, writing, when interspersed with breaks, can be continued for the long haul. After a point of intense celebration, the brain stops making any more sentences. Five/week days is lengthy enough to write extended pieces, like stories and novel chapters. Each day of the week, if it results in a few thousand words, can take the writer a far way.

I have personally stumbled upon activities unrelated to writing to be very useful in rejuvenating the mind. Any hobby is useful. Music, movies, painting, traveling, trekking, boating, dancing, exercise - the list can go on. About exercise, it's usefulness to a writer cannot be overstated. Since writing is cerebral, some form of physical activity, especially, can open up the mind.

I am saying this from personal experience. I have noticed that I am more productive when I fit in some time of stretching or yoga, where the body is put under stress rather than the mind. If I spend more time at the gym, then its outcome is more writing, and, I would say, better.

This topic of resting the brain (not the mind) indirectly also points to the issue of 'writer's block' that is so widely talked about. What is actually writer's block? Is it actually a block, or something one can work around, with rest, recreation, and exercise?