Write Where You Are
I have started Julia Cameron's "Write For Life" because it has been two years since I left my job to write a book. There is no book, but there are journals full of morning pages.
I have been writing “morning pages” for over eighteen months. A friend texted me that her son swore by Julia Cameron’s book, “The Artist’s Way,” after I confessed my writing wasn’t progressing as planned. Of course, her message arrived out of the blue and exactly when I needed to receive it; many know this as synchronicity. According to Carl Jung, coincidence can be reframed as synchronicity, and Julia is adamant that we can align our creativity with this magical phenomenon. But there is a process. The prayer of morning pages fuels it. Within days of hearing from my friend, I walked into a bookstore to browse and, with no surprise to my soul, came across a copy of "The Artist’s Way” lying solo on the shelf…waiting for me.
What has happened since then is the messiest magic, or so it seems at first glance, but I am coming to understand it as living by the blueprint of my best life. I had just left my marriage, and as I think about clarifying this with “my third marriage”, the image of an emoji gazing skyward, exasperated, pops into my mind. Julia describes these self-admonishments as “blurts” and has a mountain of advice about how to work with our inner critic. I override the critic by peering at my life through a different lens, deciding that my three marriages demonstrate a juicy life.
Soon after separating, I began the prescribed daily ritual of writing three handwritten pages of stream-of-consciousness first thing in the morning. It has been the only thing I’ve written on so many days since then. But on others, I try, including starting a book numerous times and feeling like a failure when I leave it forgotten like a cup of half-drunk tea. The essays I have grown to love writing have kept me going, though. Even when pauses are so long between them, I wonder if I was kidding myself about this writing lark. I create them here on Substack because it is a place where I feel like I am doing something. A virtual studio that I come to excited by the prospect that something amazing might happen. And so often, it does because my heart expands, courage grows, anxiety wanes, and I feel at one with my purpose. The more of them I write, the less wed I am to the idea of increasing my readership, and yet, with each new subscriber, I take it as a prompt from the universe to keep writing. The essays have become an extension of me and how I make sense of the world. They are for my daughters in many ways, so they never have to doubt who I was and what I believed in. The more honest I am when I write them, the greater my fear of exposure and rejection, but the reward of feeling like I have created something meaningful is amplified. It is a beautiful paradox.
However, I am still trying to deal with the downside of this creative process, and that is the vulnerability hangover that so often happens after I have sent my sweet babies out into the world. “Killing your babies (or darlings)” is a phrase known to writers and refers to editing or erasing words, sentences, and pages from work. These murdered “darlings” never see the light of day or feel a reader's gaze, but the ones we don’t kill are sent out to make their way in what can be a harsh world. At that point, we no longer have jurisdiction over them, like teenagers leaving home, a parent in an empty nest with a fretful heart remains.
From my Google search, it is unclear if Hemingway or Faulkner first coined the phrase, but I relate to the maternal sentiment. The emotional fallout after I published my last essay was excruciating and caught me unaware.
I had written of love, and when writing it, I was convinced universal love was pouring through me. I was sure and light and believed I was sharing my heart to help people open theirs. There were no nerves when I published it as there often are when I send my sometimes audacious writing to readers. So I was surprised to wake up the next day with the fear of rejection so heavy I was unsure how I would lift my feet through my day. I observed my angst as I got ready for work. I watched myself care for patients’ hearts and wondered why I couldn’t care for mine. I lamented in my group chat with two best friends who also write, knowing they would hold me when I couldn’t do it for myself. In the end, I surrendered because there was nothing left to do. I didn’t grasp for self-platitudes or stomp on the burning embers of my creativity. I knew the only thing that would help would be to keep writing. I follow Julia’s directive in her latest book to “write where you are”, so here I am.
Julia says that morning pages take us in the exact direction we are meant to go but not in timeframes or destinations dictated by our ego. If anything, the process dismantles the ego, banishes pride, and reveals the softness of god. What unfolds is the truth, and it takes time. An image just came to mind that writing morning pages is like being an archeologist exposing the fossil bones of our knowing with infinite care, one soft brush stroke at a time. Since starting them, I haven’t written a book, but I have travelled the world, awoken my inner sex goddess, reinvented my career, and continued to believe that I would write. I am writing. I look at the piles of journals full of morning pages and the inside of my head, and it dawns on me that they have helped create this latest version of who I am. Without them, I couldn’t have healed, explored, or brought this rich life into existence.
I can say now that morning pages have led me to this moment. As I poured out my heart, lamented my failures, and sang a song of desire through my pen every morning, I sent intention into the world, and where intention goes, energy flows. I will continue this journey and have no idea if a book will eventuate. I only know that it feels like I’m meant to do this, so I will.
Love this, Melissa. "Morning pages" and "The Artist's Way" changed my life. All your journals might yet be the seeds of a book (or more). I know I couldn't have written my books without also doing the morning pages every day. It's such a great paradox, chicken & egg mystery, that our morning pages feed into creating the life that leads to the writing of a book whose ideas you keep living into, by writing every morning so you can keep creating!