I recently watched this very old TED Talk by Steven Tomlinson. And I’m really glad I did. Though it isn’t the topic of Tomlinson’s talk, he mentions how useful he finds the process of writing 3 pages in a journal every morning. Although this practice (without the totally random 3-page rule), stretches back around 100 years before Julia Cameron was born, he credited it to her 1992 book.
I knew the practice preceded the book.
That’s because I’ve done something very similar, though with no set number of pages, ever since starting my creative work back in 1986! It’s simply a mind offload, akin to free-writing and borrowing from the Stoics practice of a couple of thousand of years ago. Initially, I thought it might be a way to clear my mind for the day ahead. However, I quickly realised that writing each morning was massively more useful than that.
It provided me with a daily place or space, to focus my thoughts, without even trying.
This has made it a powerful creativity tool, as fragments of thoughts often solidify into ideas as I write. There seems to be something about allowing your mind to flow, with no expectation or deliberate intent, and writing down whatever comes, which fires the imagination.
A totally creative process
Interestingly, Cameron limits the process to clearing negativity from your mind. I’ve never used it that way. I don’t dump negativity onto the page. For me, writing in the morning is a wholly creative process.
I just relax and allow my thoughts to wander and flow through the tip of the pen.
Then, the sparks happen.
New ideas and new directions come to me.
Not every morning. But often enough to make this extremely valuable, when used as a creative practice.
I’ve shared this idea with countless overs over the years and the feedback has been almost universally excellent.