What is the morning pages method!?
Struggling with finding “the idea” for your research paper? Too uninspired to write?
Feeling stuck during your writing process?
The solution: JOURNALING!
When I was an undergraduate student, I took a course titled “English Composition: Theory and Research.” Our professor asked us to keep journals and write in it daily. Journaling? What? This is an English Composition class, not creative writing! Our professor asked us to follow Julia Cameron’s morning pages method from Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. Whether you call it freewriting, morning pages, or journaling, morning pages are a great way to “release” negative emotions or thoughts and clear your mind. Such forms of writing have been said to help students “discover ideas” during the beginning of the writing process (Sweedler-Brown 1984). Freewriting and expressive journaling like the morning pages method also aid in “creative unblocking” (Cameron). If you’ve ever felt stuck on choosing an idea for your paper or your writing feels stilted and the words just aren’t “flowing” from your fingertips onto your keyboard, then you may want to try the morning pages method.
How do I do it?
So, how does this method work? First thing in the morning, before you brush your teeth, you must grab your pen (not a pencil because this stream-of-consciousness writing is not about self-editing) and journal and just start writing. Whatever words are coming into your mind, put them on paper. If you feel cranky about waking up 5 minutes earlier to do this, write about that. Just don’t think. Write. It doesn’t have to be structured or grammatically correct. It can be nonsensical.
Now, I’m going to cheat!
“Ms. Cameron says you must do the morning pages first thing in the morning. Well, I need breakfast and a cup of caffeine in me before I can do anything.“
Faiza’s inner stream of consciousness
Then I sit on my bed or in a chair and just write. I write for about 5 minutes without “thinking.” I don’t think about what I’m writing nor worry about grammar or what a load of garbage my writing is. I just keep my hand moving. Whatever pops up in my brain, I write it down. I don’t cross out words, and I definitely don’t get up until 5 minutes have passed.
Then I never look at the pages again. This part is up to you. If you feel like you have encountered some big revelation while doing your morning pages, by all means, go back and re-read them. If you were in a bad mood when you did your morning pages, it’s best not to go back and read the pages. You should be doing this every day, but I don’t write morning pages unless I know I’m going to be working on a big project or paper later. Do the morning pages daily. When you become consistent with it, you’ll find a system that works for you. I’m personally trying to do it daily now that I’m writing more because of school.
Gotcha. By how does this help me as a tutor?
As a writing center tutor, one of the most common issues student writers face is developing topics for papers or coming up with new ideas, claims, evidence, etc. while writing. If a writer is stuck, give them some time to “write it out.” If appropriate, ask them to just free-write for 5 minutes and physically distance yourself from the writer. If the writer often gets stuck while writing (like we all do), tell the writer about this morning pages method.
And if you try this method for more than a week, let me know how it went!
Sources
Cameron, Julia. “Morning Pages FAQ.” The Artist’s Way, https://juliacameronlive.com/2017/09/18/morning-pages-faq/. Accessed 15 Feb. 2020
Sweedler-Brown, Carol. “Generating Structural Revision from the Freewriting of Basic Writers.”Rhetoric Review, vol. 2, no. 2, 1984, pp. 92–101.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/465566. Accessed 22 Feb. 2020