I’m back again and notice a settling, like flakes falling gently to the bottom of a snow globe
I’ve returned, again, to writing in the morning. The moments I spend help prepare the ground. It is like tilling the garden in spring, working the soil. I pull out gnarled roots, things that have been bothering me, like the problem-member of our Buy Nothing Group or a recent conversation with an acquaintance that felt off. I wonder about the weather or explore a mood that has settled around me.
I notice what's important. Over and over the same things come up: my desire to write, to find purpose, to be in a community. They're the loamy minerals that make the soil rich. I need to know them, understand them, or I risk growing things I don’t wish for.
This writing is a watering too. The moving of my hand on the page with no restriction, no censoring, soothes and quenches. Here, everything spills out.
We do this too in generative writing, letting the doors open and allowing the story to go where it wants to go, but it’s not the same. There we have a focal point, a story-telling purpose. Here we go everywhere and anywhere. We complain, wonder, and remember. We mourn things undone, uncover treasures. We plan and assert. We congratulate. Cajole.
It is consciousness spilling out of its bucket, sloppy onto the page—raw and petulant; willful and wonderful
And yet somehow, surely, s day arrives when I tell myself that I don't have time for this morning writing. It’s not a big dramatic declaration (if it were, I’d be able to catch myself before I let it happen.) Rather, it’s a subtle slipping away. Maybe I stay up too late or sleep in. Perhaps I have an early appointment and haven’t made time. Or I need to hustle into a meeting. Or sometimes it’s the phone—the damn phone—that thieves this precious time.
And just like that it seems, I forget how good I feel when I write in the morning. I wake up, and instead of writing, I stretch and have coffee then bustle into the office, scrolling through and responding to emails, fingers in flight over the keyboard. I attend meetings, meet clients and so on.
A small pile of days accumulate before I notice a restlessness, an uneasiness. I tell myself it’s surely attributable to these days of dark moments, these days of division and dying democracies. Or I tell myself it’s probably because of my own sense of fading or flailing, turning around in my work, forgetting what I’m here to do.
Then, like a cartoon character with a light bulb appearing over its head, I realize with a bit of a jolt that it's been days since I’ve held my morning ritual of writing. So, that night, I move the alarm back 20 or 30 minutes from where it had slipped forward. On waking, I quietly pad out to the kitchen table and sit down. I straighten a stack of loose-leaf paper, lines waiting and edges curling in the morning dampness, and pick up my pen.
Sometimes the remembering doesn't happen on Day 1
This Day 1 is one of dozens of Day 1’s over the last 20 years. Words fall and land messy; they wander or burst unexpectedly. And by Day 2 or Day 3, it feels as if something settles. A soft sigh, an imperceptible righting. I hear the heater humming or the faint purr of the refrigerator and not much else, other than the pen—a simple Pilot G2—scratching in the early morning light.
In my morning writing, I've solved mysteries and reminded myself more times than I can count what I love and what I don't. I've steered myself gently ever north, course correcting over the years, doubling back before continuing on.
I don't keep what I write. Every once in a while, I'll be gripped by the sense that there’s gold in these pages, and I’ll want to guard them closely, tucking them away for future pieces or valuable insights. I’ll tab a section or star several paragraphs, until I remember that I never go back and read what I’ve written in these sessions; then I let them go.
The words themselves are not the thing; it is act of writing that is invaluable
These writings tend the soil of life, making it more ready to grow beautiful things—a life oriented toward learning and creativity, toward connection, justice, and love.
A life directed toward whatever you value most.
When and how do you like to write?
N.B. You may have heard of Morning Pages from Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way. That’s where I learned about the practice decades ago. But what you might not know is that Julia Cameron did not invent this practice. Rather, the idea of writing in this way and in the morning was first shared by Dorothea Brandt in 1934 in her book Becoming a Writer.
N.B. (2) A few women are gathering on an ongoing basis for cowriting and the occasional writing workshop. If you're interested in learning more, you can visit this page on my website to find out more.