Hagintha Woods

The Artist’s Way has a lot of different exercises, each chapter made of different readings that then lead into the challenges. They are filled with ways to protect one’s boundaries, increase one’s self-concept, and aid in one’s growth toward being a more confident, creative artist.

But through all the different exercises, through all 12 weeks of the book, there are two main pillars. These are requests to the attendee who takes the course that are being asked of them every week, that are fundamental: These are the Morning Pages and the Artist Dates.

The morning pages are a type of journaling.

Each morning, upon waking, one brings oneself to go and write 3 pages of longhand. You can write about anything at all, even ‘I don’t know what to write.’ on end if you wanted to. It just has to cover 3 whole pages.

When I read of it, I thought this was something I could do easily enough. I’d been in love with writing ever since I first learned to use a pen. I write to straighten out my emotions, to outline my thinking, commit things to memory and to craft my plans for my day. For the rewards it promised- becoming a writer that was happier, more fulfilled and in tune with themselves- I had tried far stranger.

But oh, the mornings.

A terminally late sleeper, I had both a very deep inertia against getting up in the morning, as well as a deep respect for my rest.

I typically scheduled 2 hours of time to wake up and get ready before I had to leave my house, a good amount of time that accounted for eating, showering, stretching and staring blankly at the wall to ready myself for the day. Barring that (for that whole ritual had to be done before I felt like any sort of a human being), I protected my sleep religiously.

As such, to wake up even earlier to write, when I was so eternally sleep deprived, to write when my brain was groggy and can’t even provide anything of quality… That whole concept irked me.

Of the many journals I’ve filled since with days upon days of morning pages, at least 60% of those pages would be me waxing poetic about wanting to sleep. But it would also have been remiss of me to say that I tried the artist’s way whilst not doing the main exercises recommended.

And so, at the start of this, for at least the next 3 months, I begrudgingly set my alarm earlier. When said alarm rang, I forced myself to throw off the covers instead of repeatedly smacking the screen in the hopes of hitting the snooze button.

Why does the bed always feel the most comfortable when you have to get out of it?

It felt like a huge waste of time, especially when I was waking up early just to write uninspired comments, drivel and to-do lists, especially on days when I had to wake up early as it was.

But in an interesting surprise, there were benefits.

For one, writing about the day ahead in the morning became a way to prime the mind. Facing the blank page with a similarly blank mental state, one of the things I grew accustomed with penning down were my thoughts and plans for the day, if only because they used up a lot of space.

I wrote down the things I had to do, things I wished to accomplish, and any new things or special events I was looking forward to.

Sometimes, whilst writing the tasks, I would realise that they were too much in real time. By putting out all the vague notions of what I wanted unto the page, I could more clearly see where I was expecting too much of the limited time that I had, and had to reprioritise.

I wanted what I wanted, but when my plans for the day started looking less like a plan and more like an idealistic checklist for an entire week, I was forced to acknowledge that I was asking too much. Faced with the words staring at me, I had to choose which tasks I wanted to focus on, and which had to be put down for a day.

Previously, I had a plan of what I needed to do, but it would be a vague sense of what tasks had to be done, one right after the next, and I often felt like a weary soldier just trying to keep up with it all.

Now, putting it on the page, it gained a sense of clarity, showed me what I had planned for myself for the day, and gave me a sense of ownership and responsibility. It was as if I’d promoted myself to a general, dragging the soldiers of my soul, will and body to the map that I’d lain out for us.

No longer was I looking in a vague direction pointed out to myself and marching endlessly. Instead, I was pointing at landmarks, making plans, and saying things like “We will try to reach the mountains by sunset.”

Additionally, whilst planning my day, I also wrote about what I was excited for within the events of the day. Unwittingly, I was doing an exercise in noticing and looking forward to the events in my day.

In the writing of it, I allowed myself to get excited in the morning. “I am excited.” I would write, and it would be both a fact and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Later in the afternoon, eating from a noodle store that I’d singled out in the last week, I would smile as I took a large slurp. “I’ve been waiting for this.” I would exclaim dramatically, and I meant it even more now, having let myself imagine it.

Meetings with friends grew more poignant, experiences more layered, the tastes of different foods more notable. I was consciously noting the day and what I wanted to look out for, and I found myself becoming more present as a result.

Of course, this also then meant disappointments became all the more devastating, slights more hurtful. There was only so far I could go in insisting that I didn’t care that much about something that happened when I was faced with pages upon pages of words about how excited I’d been for an event and what it could mean for me. It was not so easy for me to rewrite my narratives as I saw fit anymore, and it kept me more accountable. Within it, I grew more comfortable with seeing what was in front of me without looking away.

With the greater awareness, I gained more nuance. With the emotions getting louder, they gained layers. Happiness became a nervous tingle, exhilaration joined by the satisfying fullness of completion. Anger brooded into resentment, before boiling down to reveal envy under its hood. Inertia and procrastination showed themselves to be fear and a desire to not incur the ire of others.

Each layer was an invitation to explore deeper, to secret hopes and deeper desires. And what a coincidence, I now had a blank page to fill before I started the day. There was an increased vibrancy to my daily life, that bloomed within me to colour the outside world, which was then reciprocally coloured by that world in turn.

The regularity of it all was something I had to grow used to as well.

I was used to writing at both the physical and metaphorical night.

I would often take to the pen after the cards had been dealth, the moves made, and the road ahead was obscured by darkness. Within such times of scarcity, my writing would bleed unto the page, pulsing unto the paper as if I’d nicked an artery, spurting and pooling wherever it got the chance.

It was messy, chaotic and cathartic, an exercise that often left me exhausted but satisfied, some new revelation or resolution clutched between my fingers, ink stained and trembling with spent adrenaline. What now if I had to do it every day?

Writing for the sake of writing, for the purpose of routine, didn’t seem all that appealing to me. Indeed, when I first started this endeavour, compared day after day of shopping lists and complaints about how I got up early to my usual whorls of expression… The dreary recounting of day to day drudgery paled against the euphoric edge of writing desperately as if my life depended upon it, and I felt like I’d lost my way.

Yes, perhaps it worked for other people, but that didn’t necessarily mean it would work for me. Perhaps with the daily writing, I was leeching myself out like a stuck pig.

And for what?

My writing was my lifeblood. If someone offered me regular hours, a stable income and healthy habits at the price of staving off writing, I’d be writing about the encounter before I even deigned to reply. (What a relief, then, that it’s not an either or kind of situation here.)

I am a curious person by nature, and a scientific one by nurture.

Because of this, I’d tried the morning pages, and I was still loathe to give it up before the 3 month deadline I’d committed to, but I considered it, so afradi that if I lost myself, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. But I kept showing up. And slowly, I noticed that things were changing.

Writing has an affirming, validating existence upon the self, and one’s reality.

When I was in school, I used to take down the contents of the lesson in my own words. There was something in the act of penning it down that stuck itself more firmly in my memory, that allowed me to interact with the material in a more engaging way.

And so it was with the morning pages. As I wrote about my sleepiness and my schedule day after day, I finally snapped and forced myself to sleep where I would’ve considered it a waste of time before.

For however long it would take, I resolved myself to do the morning pages and then sleep for the entire day. After 2 weeks of this, I actually felt awake in the mornings, like I could get up and face the day.

For years I had been sleepy, accepted that being chronically exhausted was my birthright, and just like that, I had questioned things. Not only that, but I’d put my questions into action, and I’d changed things.

It was startling.

But it wasn’t the only thing that was changing. I was becoming a different person, setting boundaries and doing more active exercise. I was shifting.

By arriving at the page first thing in the morning, I was telling myself that I was a priority. By returning day after day, I was showing myself that I was worth effort being made.

Compared to my deep, creative writing, I was not diving into the depths, instead hovering at the top, darting back and forth like a pond skater. However, I had not realised that there were revelations awaiting me there too.

How many days had I spent waking up exhausted?

Almost every morning that I could remember. How many after I started the morning pages before I did something about it? 2 weeks, at the most.

Going through my days, being tired was a negligible fact of life, an unfortunate but bearable backing track in the music of my existence. Why complain, when there were the fluting magic of company, the thrumming beats of passion in the air? If tiredness were the price to pay for the good and the wondrous, it felt almost entitled to mention it.

But when I was writing about it, day after day, it brought itself into focus. I am tired. I am tired. I am exhausted.

By the third or fourth reiteration I was noticing that it was a consistent part of who I was. By a week of repetition, I had to look at the words again, written clear as day. This was who I was. And looking at it, I was forced to ask myself if this was who I wanted to be.

I felt an irrepressible indignance.

By a week and a half, my subconscious was brewing ideas, toying with solutions. I was sleeping earlier, cooling my room. At the 2 week mark, I tried my sleeping experiment.

When I wrote about a problem over and over, I was problem solving. I was forming a clearer idea of the problem, the nature of it and what it suggested, and the ramifications of its effects.

At some point, it forced me into actions.

Bad habits and problems can live indefinitely in the shadows of the mind, affecting the mind and limiting perspective. But pen them down, put them into the light, and they become tangible. Pen them down enough, and I would start to form a plan. “This is a problem.” I told myself. “Okay,” my mind then asked, cogs starting to whir, “then how will we solve it?”

By writing daily, it also let me adapt as required.

When I tried to do too many tasks, I could come back the next day and review the tasks again. “Okay, this didn’t work as I’d planned,” I’d acknowledge the next day, given that there was no one but myself to admit such words to, “Perhaps we’ll try to do less today.”

It was like I was caring for my body like a machine, tweaking at the joints, the expectations, till it ran more smoothly. Soon, instead of having a million things to do and never enough time, I was setting out goals that I would accomplish, lists that I’d be able to complete a majority of.

I was no longer battling against a current. I was moving with it instead, making plans within the locus of my control, and applying myself to what I could affect with gusto.

With the expectations for the day growing more achievable and realistic, I was learning to trust myself more. I was setting goals that I was meeting, and I was showing up for myself. I now knew that I would try my best to accomplish what I set out for myself and what I needed.

When there were hiccups, I knew I was trying to tell myself something. I didn’t get as frustrated as I used to. Instead, I got quiet, and I listened. By being more compassionate and trustworthy toward myself, I tweaked my problems a lot easier and took myself more seriously.

And then, the most miraculous of miracles.

Whilst I was acknowledging the benefits of the morning pages and how I had more creativity and health to do my ‘actual writing’, I started having revelations of my own.

I had already had multiple realisations of who I was and who I wanted to be, but when I was struggling with a scene I’d finished and was unsure of where the story was to go from there, I wrote about the struggle I was facing, the joy I wanted others to find in it, and why I found joy in what I wanted to write.

As I expounded upon the page, I felt something within me ease, the words come gentler, and I returned to the story with a lighter heart, deciding to see where the story would take me.

Writing as frequently as I did not, I was no longer waiting for emotions to build up and burst from me. Instead, I was floating alone, and in the experience of floating, I was noticing whirlpools and eddies, and diving into them to explore before they overwhelmed me.

A few times, after writing the morning pages, I would write on a fresh sheet of paper, having found a thread that needed unwinding. Having acknowledged my joy of writing, I was returning to my projects more and more often, and I could see the results. Stories that had stalled gained words, ideas and tangents gaining life.

I was writing more regularly than I had before, bringing my newfound vibrancy and consistency to the thing I cared the most about, and it was flourishing. Words were being written, worlds were getting built, and once I realised that, my already paltry reluctance against the concept of the morning pages crumbled.

So, loathe as I was to admit it, this is going to be a habit I will endeavour to keep past the troubles of waking up early and blocking out the required time, effort and the annoying magic of having to fill all 3 pages. Despite my sulkiness, however, I can’t find the gumption in me to truly be mad about it.

For the gift that seems to keep on giving, I have no choice but to pay the price.