Morning Pages

I may have found a purpose of this blog.

As much as I'm more or less against self-help anything, I was recommended a book called The Artist's Way. The whole purpose of the book and its techniques is to help the reader tap into their creative being and have them express that appropriately - no matter what the artist's medium. It's not so bad, but admittedly, I haven't really followed through with the program. For a 11 week course, I think I've made it through week three at the furthest (this brings up in idea for a substantial resolution for 2008).

Despite my lack of commitment to this program, there is one aspect to it that I tend to start and stop more than going through the program itself. It's called Morning Pages, where one is supposed to do a 3 page free write first thing in the morning. Surprisingly enough, I've managed to maintain that several times for weeks at a time, only to discontinue it for some reason or another.

Of course, it is recommended that these three pages be written longhand and kept private, and obviously, if I were to go through with this plan to use this blog as my Morning Pages notebook, I would be violating both these rules. But I have a feeling that something about blogging my Morning Pages would be a good way to encourage me to actually stay consistent with my writing.

I say this for two reasons:
ONE: I type much faster than I write. This is true for many people, and on the plus side, I can read my writing much, much better when it's typed as opposed to my chicken scratch. This is very important when writing down thoughts; because I can surprisingly have pretty nice handwriting if I take the time to do so, but when writing down thoughts, such handwriting is tossed out the window. Some people never revisit what they write, and may even destroy what they do write, but I have used what I write to see what my state of mind is during a particular period or day, and compare that with my current state of mind. I like being able to do that, and using a blogging interface would help me archive that material.

TWO: Call it a case of histrionics, but there's something about posting for all the world to see that encourages me to write. Not that I'm here writing for a particular audience, but there is a strange element of appeal of someone peeking into my thoughts and life without actually invading it. I do know this blog is accessible to the greater pool of Blogger users, but to date, there are only two people I know personally that are aware of this blog. Even with those two people, I hardly think they actually check up on this blog with any regularity (if you are, please make yourself known ;) )I usually tend to write addressing an imaginary audience, so why not make that imaginary audience real, but keep some strange/twisted sense of anonymity to it?

Of course, this plan is contingent of whether I'm able to get up, fire up my computer and post every morning. As it stands right now, I do not have a guaranteed internet signal at home. But even with that obstacle in place, I can always just write on any word processor to copy+paste it once I have access to the Internet.

How about when I'm away from a computer + internet completely? Well then, Pen and notepad it is!

This isn't to say I'm starting this regimen tomorrow. It's just a thought. I would like to start writing daily once again (perhaps evidenced by my feeble attempt to maintain this blog), and perhaps, such an action will inspire an maybe even prepare me to go through the 11 week Artist's Way program.