The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal

Week One

Recovering a Sense of Safety

Creativity flourishes in an atmosphere of safety and acceptance. That is the atmosphere you will be building for yourself through the morning pages. The sense of this safety may not be immediate. In fact, undertaking morning pages may feel both exciting and scary. Will I really find the time? What if I have nothing to say? You will have "something" to say-even if that something is merely griping at committing to the pages.

It is the artist date that many of you may find more tricky. It sounds so frivolous. What good could that do?

Exactly this. Artist dates reinforce your sense of safety. They strengthen your contact with a source of benevolence in the world at large. When you write morning pages you are like a person in a life raft sending out a signal: "Here. Here I am. This is what I want." But until you take your artist date, it is as if you have your receive channel shut off. In other words, you may SOS, but when the call comes back, "Tell us again, exactly," you don't hear it. You leave yourself marooned and feeling frightened. Please practice both tools together.

We speak of practicing the morning pages and practicing the artist date. You do not need to use either tool perfectly. Be gentle but persistent in your attempts. Here are the answers to some often-asked questions:

Yes, morning pages should be done in the morning. Yes, it's better to do pages "late" than not at all. (And yes, everyone is tempted to cheat a little.)

As for the artist dates, they are easily sabotaged. A friend may ask to come along. A deadline may suddenly rear its head. Be vigilant about protecting your artist date. Plan it ahead of time, execute it, and consider it a major victory no matter how frivolous it may seem at the time.

Your sense of safety will grow, along with your sense of mastery over these basic tools.

1. There is no wrong way to do morning pages. These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art.

2. Morning pages map our own interior. Without them our dreams may remain terra incognita.

3. The morning pages move us into artist brain. Artist brain is our inventor, our child, our very own personal absent-minded professor. Artist brain says, "Hey! That is so neat!" It puts odd things together. . . .

4. The morning pages miniaturize our Censor. The Censor is part of our leftover survival brain. Any original thought can look pretty dangerous to our Censor.

5. Morning pages will allow you to detach from your negative Censor. It may even begin to seem like a grumpy cartoon character.

6. Doing your artist date, you are receiving-opening yourself to insight, inspiration, guidance.

7. When we work at our art, we dip into the well of our experience and scoop out images. Because we do this, we need to learn how to put images back. How do we fill the well? By the artist date.

8. Unfortunately, many artists never receive critical early encouragement. As a result, they may not know they are artists at all.

9. Too intimidated to become artists themselves, very often too low in self-worth to even recognize that they have an artistic dream, many people become shadow artists instead. Artists themselves but ignorant of their true identity, shadow artists are to be found shadowing declared artists.

10. Artists love other artists. Shadow artists are gravitating to their rightful tribe but cannot yet claim their birthright.

11. In recovering from our creative blocks, it is necessary to go gently and slowly. What we are after here is the healing of old wounds-not the creation of new ones.

12. Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

13. Most of the time when we are blocked in an area of our life, it is because we feel safer that way.

Negative beliefs are exactly that: beliefs, not facts. Artists need not be drunk, crazy, broke, alone-or any of a number of our culture's negative beliefs about them.

14. It is possible, quite possible, to be both an artist and romantically fulfilled. It is quite possible to be an artist and financially successful.

15. Affirmations help achieve a sense of safety and hope: I am a channel for God's creativity, and my work comes to good.

16. My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them.

17. My creativity heals myself and others.

18. There is a divine plan of goodness for my work.

19. I am willing to let God create through me.

20. It is important to remember that at first flush, going sane feels exactly like going crazy.

21. As we gain strength, so will some of the attacks of self-doubt. This is normal, and we can deal with these stronger attacks when we see them as symptoms of recovery.

Week Two

Recovering a Sense of Identity

One of the first fruits of morning pages is a clearer sense of personal identity. You are starting to look with clearer eyes at how you see yourself and how you see the world around you. You may feel a sense of wonder as your true self is slowly revealed. Skepticism may be starting to give way to curiosity. Who exactly are you? As your identity gets clearer, you will find your relationships shifting. You may be starting to know and speak your mind, which makes you less easy to take advantage of, more capable of saying no. Your more poisonous playmates will not appreciate this shift in your self-worth.

Many creative people surround themselves with "crazymakers," those who discount their realities, abuse their schedules, expect special treatment, break their agreements, and generally, create chaos, which siphons off creative energy. As you recover your identity, these crazymakers may feel threatened. "You're getting selfish," they may tell you.

In the very best sense, they are right. Your self is beginning to be more visible, less embedded in the expectations of others. This can be threatening, not only to others but to you as well. Treat yourself carefully. Remember that "treating yourself like a precious object will make you strong."

It may take strength to execute your pages this week-strength in the face of your crazymakers, strength in the face of your own possible temptation to return to the person who was blocked. "Better safe than sorry," part of you may say.

I remind you: you were both safe and sorry. That is the identity you are in the process of shedding. Now that you are no longer who you were but not yet who you are becoming, you may find yourself feeling awkward, like a hatchling. Hatchlings are awkward, but they are also becoming free.

22. Remember, the morning pages are private and are not intended for the scrutiny of well-meaning friends.

23. Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance.

24. Not surprisingly, the most poisonous playmates for us as recovering creatives are people whose creativity is still blocked. Do not expect your blocked friends to applaud your recovery.

25. Be very careful to safeguard your newly recovering artist. A related thing creatives do to avoid being creative is to involve themselves with crazymakers. Crazymakers are those personalities that create storm centers.

26. The crazymakers in your life share certain destructive patterns that make them poisonous for any sustained creative work. Crazymakers break deals and destroy schedules. Crazymakers expect special treatment. Crazymakers discount your reality. Crazymakers pretend you're crazy.

27. Crazymakers spend your time and money. Crazymakers are expert blamers. Crazymakers create dramas-but seldom where they belong.

28. Crazymakers hate schedules-except their own.

29. As frightening and abusive as life with a crazymaker is, we find it far less threatening than the challenge of a creative life of our own.

30. Perhaps the greatest barrier for any of us as we look for an expanded life is our own deeply held skepticism.

31. The reason we think it's weird to imagine an unseen helping hand is that we still doubt that it's okay for us to be creative.

32. When our little experiment provokes the universe to open a door or two, we start shying away.

33. We've gotten brave enough to try recovery but we don't want the universe to really pay attention.

34. Think of the mind as a room. In that room we keep all our usual ideas about life.

35. The room has a door. That door is ever so slightly ajar, and outside we can see a great deal of dazzling light.

36. Nudging the door open a bit more is what makes for open-mindedness.

37. We can gently set aside our skepticism-for later use, if we need it-and when a weird idea or coincidence whizzes by, gently nudge the door a little further open.

38. Attention is an act of connection.

39. The truth is that a creative life involves great swathes of attention. Attention is a way to connect and survive.

40. The reward for attention is always healing.

41. Remember that it is far harder and more painful to be a blocked artist than it is to do the work.

42. Be alert, always, for the presence of the Great Creator leading and helping your artist.

Week Three

Recovering a Sense of Power

When Mark and I teach a twelve-week course, we often refer to week three by shorthand. "It's Anger Week," we say. One of the first ways that our creative power returns to us is as anger.

"But I'm not angry," some students snap back, sparks flying from between their teeth.

Maybe it isn't anger. Maybe it's something closer to self-respect. As the morning pages build up, clearing your vision of the present, you also get a sharper look at your past. This can make for both clarity and volatility.

As you work to put your daily life in order, bits and pieces of your past may surface, including memories of times and people to whom you gave away too much of yourself.

"I wasted so much time!" you may catch yourself thinking. And then, "Other people really wasted my time!"

When this wave of clarity happens, you may see that you have been powerful enough to have survived a great deal of negativity, but that you aren't interested in taking that negativity anymore. Often to your own surprise, you may find yourself speaking up:

"No, it's not okay you're late."

"No, I have a real issue with lending you money."

"No, I'm not sick, crazy, selfish. I'm just fed up with being your battery!"

Oops! Some of this does sound like anger, even though it is more accurately a simple reclaiming of misplaced power. Many of you may feel this power in your bodies as a sort of heightened voltage. Therefore:

This is a week to focus on concrete self-nurturing acts: food in the refrigerator, cleaning out those bathroom shelves, tossing the clothes that signal low self-worth, or better yet, passing hand-me-down castoffs into the arms of Goodwill.

Practice being specific with yourself. Admit what you'd like to change. Claim your artist date and some extra "mulling" time. Remember, experience is also a form of treasure. As you experience your present and re-experience your past, you are sorting the dross from the gold and naming yourself worthy. That self-valuing is the source of your power.

43. Anger points the way, not just the finger. In the recovery of a blocked artist, anger is a sign of health.

44. We're much more afraid that there might be a God than we are that there might not be.

45. If there is a responsive creative force that does hear us and act on our behalf, then we may really be able to do some things.

46. Never ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt.

47. The universe falls in with worthy plans and most especially with festive and expansive ones.

48. We like to pretend it is hard to follow our heart's dreams. The truth is, it is difficult to avoid walking through the many doors that will open.

49. The universe is prodigal in its support. We are miserly in what we accept.

50. Leap, and the net will appear.

51. Making a piece of art may feel a lot like telling a family secret.

52. The act of making art exposes a society to itself.

53. Often we are wrongly shamed as creatives. From this shaming we learn that we are wrong to create.

54. Criticism that asks a question like "How could you?" can make an artist feel like a shamed child.

55. Not all criticism is shaming. In fact, even the most severe criticism when it fairly hits the mark is apt to be greeted by an internal Aha! if it shows the artist a new and valid path for work.

56. It often takes another artist to see the embryonic work that is trying to sprout. The inexperienced or harsh critical eye, instead of nurturing the shoot of art into being, may shoot it down instead.

57. We cannot make our professional critics more healthy or more loving or more constructive than they are. But we can learn to comfort our artist child over unfair criticism; we can learn to find friends with whom we can safely vent our pain. We can learn not to deny and stuff our feelings when we have been artistically savaged.

58. Art requires a safe hatchery.

59. We must learn that when our art reveals a secret of the human soul, those watching it may try to shame us for making it.

60. It is God's will for us to be creative.

61. Pointed criticism, if accurate, often gives the artist an inner sense of relief. The criticism that damages is that which disparages, dismisses, ridicules, or condemns.

62. Useless criticism leaves us with a feeling of being bludgeoned. There is nothing to be gleaned from irresponsible criticism.

63. Many blocked people are actually very powerful and creative personalities who have been made to feel guilty about their own strengths and gifts.

Week Four

Recovering a Sense of Integrity

By this point in your work with the morning pages, you may have experienced some substantial inner shifts. For many, these shifts manifest as moving the furniture-mentally and physically. I call this shift "spiritual chiropractic."

Your sense of space or your sense of color may have altered. Your musical tastes may have taken a new turn. You might be experiencing vivid dreams and daydreaming about new possibilities in a more expansive way. Some of you may now sense you have outgrown a job, an apartment, even a romance. In short, you are deepening into a new sense of integrity.