As a person who is interested in the creative process and particularly in the use of the written word, I like the idea of morning pages but also find the way that people talk about them to be sort of… we’ll say I find it off-putting.
That being said, a practice that I have found helpful in recent weeks is the simple act of writing 750 words everyday.
I was reminded of this resource recently when an email came through telling me that they’d moved it to a new online platform and that I still had access to my legacy account because I joined it all the way back in… September 2012. I’m not being paid in any way to mention the fact that I use this. They have a paid plan now but I’ve already got enough stuff to pay for. But you may find it worth it, especially if you want to support an independent developer.
For me, there are three things that I get out of 750words:
A place to spill out words
When I say spill, I really do mean spill. It’s a place that keeps track of the number of words I am writing for me and it does a bit of analysing of them and tells me broadly how I seem to be processing things. It tells me if I’m thinking more about myself (using I/me pronouns) or about others (they/them). It gives me a clue as to the things that I am thinking about. It generates a sort of word-cloud so that I can see what seems to be most present on my mind. And so, for me, it’s almost a place to think out loud.
I don’t have to think about what to do with the words
When it comes to my work or my own personal writing, a lot of thought goes into figuring out where to keep the words that I am producing. Is this a note on a Bible passage? Is it a shopping list? Is it some thoughts on this chapter of this book? Is it for a project?
All of those things have to go to different places. I get quite… anxious about losing work or losing things that are potentially useful. But my 750 words don’t have to be useful. They are in that moment, but they don’t have to make their way into a system. Sometimes they do because I realise that I am thinking quite clearly about a thing.
Mostly? I take a look at the insights it has made on my writing and don’t look at it again. And that is quite freeing.
I’m not concerned about data loss
Related to the previous point, once I have had a sense of what I seem to be thinking about, I don’t actually need my words to be preserved. The team there does do that, but it doesn’t make or break the whole thing for me. I even have the option of exporting all of my words to archive elsewhere, but I haven’t done that yet. I don’t know that I will.