Isn’t it great how you meet this person or that person and they introduce you to some other person and through them you find out stuff that otherwise never would have made it into your world? It’s an entire blog at least, or more. In fact a dear bloggy friend of mine, Eric (aka faltarego) has an entire blog project dedicated to this. I can’t even do the project justice, so honestly, just go read the blog.
Anyways, my only little connection story. Last year during NaNo I met a very cool lady by the name of Sue Buckley at one of the Write-Ins. She is one of the editors of PaperBox Books which is an online publishing company. I could be completely derailed if I start going off about that, so again… just clicky the links (after you read my post of course). She had a little BBQ thing at her house this summer where I met another cool lady, Moira Young. Finally we come to the point.
In a recent blog Moira talks about a website she’s come across, 750words.com
Seemed like an interesting concept so I went off to research a little more. The website started from an idea in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. In it she has this idea called Morning Pages where you write, each morning, by hand 3 pages or approximately 750 words. This is meant to be a sort of stream of consciousness thing where you write whatever comes to mind, free of censorship, editing, etc.
The creators of 750words.com have moved this concept into the modern age. While I have to say there is a certain something-something to writing by hand (the Plot and Paper Project is testament to that), honestly how often do we have a notebook handy. A website is way easier to access. There are other bonuses to letting technology have a go at the Morning Pages.
Firstly you can turn it into a competition, every day you write you get points, more points is better, so yay! But where the real fun comes in is the ability to analyze what you’ve written… and this website does just that. Once you complete your writing you are brought to a stats page.
The first is technical. How many words? How many words per minute? How long did it take? You can clearly see where I stopped to drink some coffee or respond to a text lol.
The next section is a lot more interesting. Their analyzers look through your words and help you see what it is that’s on your mind. Apparently… I’m really affectionate. This has been a common theme over the last 3 days of my Morning Pages. I also talk a lot about Religion, again a common theme over the 3 days. It also thinks I’m upset, that could be due to the fact that the day I wrote this I was just getting over a migraine. The big shocker here was my concern over Death. To be perfectly honest I have no idea how it came up with that. However it only appears the one day, some word that day must have set it off.
According to this I’m slightly (but not overly) introverted, with a certainly positive feeling lol. In all fairness, it’s not half wrong. That’s a pretty good description of me, and this theme continues over the days I’ve done this.
Was interesting to see that I’m concerned with the present, and to some degree the past and almost hardly with the future. I probably knew this already, but to see it written out… idk. I find it interesting.
When the day is done and you click to look at an entry you can read it, but you’re also given a few more options:
As you go on to read the entry words are highlighted and it tells you what each of these contribute to. (Oddly enough I couldn’t find any that pointed to Death in my entry so really don’t know lawl.)
The Point
All this is very cool and all (or not depending on how you think) but what is the point? For me I am finding it so relaxing. I actually look forward every morning to writing my pages. Just get everything I’m thinking about out of my head and on paper. A couple of the days I have written the same thing over and over again until I finally left like I could leave it on the page (screen?) and proceed with my day. Writing is the way I communicate. I can talk, sort of… but I am most comfortable writing. Spoken words slip away so quickly, I don’t know.
You can phrase your entries as letters, prayers, random jibberish, I don’t know, whatever works for you. But I challenge you to write 750 words, uncensored every morning and tell me that you didn’t discover something about yourself.
Anyone else do Morning Pages? Do you write long hand or use some sort of webpage, document, etc? I’d be very interested to hear about your experiences!
For those who don’t…
Hey, Ash… Thanks for the mention, and that 750words thing sounds really cool. I used to do the morning pages many years ago when I first read The Artist’s Way. I think I almost finished the book. It really is a good way to get the stuff out of your head so you can move on with your day. I wish I still had the self discipline to do them. Maybe I’ll get back to a blog entry a day.
Anyway, interesting post. Keep it goin’!!
That’s what I love about it.. just that clearing of the mind first thing morning. Been a much more relaxed couple of days.
I wish I could commit to something like this… unfortunately at the moment things are hectic on my end (first midterm season >< does that), but that's a neat idea.
I keep my writing in a lot of places online (bloggage, Protag, ficly, text documents), but I particularly like to scribble things down on a physical sheet of paper, sometimes even in cursive! More thought goes into what you put down on the page so you don't waste energy, I think. But I like to scribble on anything I can reference later (I've written stuff on paper towels before… no, I'm not joking).
Heck, I love just the idea of writing 750 words stream of consciousness every morning!
I might start doing that.
It’s very interesting to go back and see what thoughts you bump into along the way!
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