By Becky Jo Gesteland
Two years ago, I started writing morning pages, per Julia Cameron’s suggestion in The Artist’s Way. I wake up early every—well almost every—weekday morning and encounter a new sheet of paper. This blank page offers the opportunity to write about whatever I want and take my time doing it. Though I admit I can only tolerate this blankness in the morning. Later in the day, I need a draft or an already-written essay to expand or revise. At night I want a complete manuscript, preferably written by someone else.
Then suddenly the morning pages stopped working, and I thought about stopping them entirely. Maybe they had served their purpose—getting me back into a writing groove—and it was time to move onto something else? Now I wonder why I thought that. Because my motivation to write was so low that I deluded myself into thinking it would be better to quit the one thing that actually compelled me to write? Because how was that going for me?
’Twas the voice of the devil, calling me over to her side. “Give up this thing and life will be easier,” she urges.
Her argument compelled me. Fortunately, my gut told me I had to at least write about the idea of quitting the morning pages before actually quitting them. These pages are not just about jump-starting my writing, these pages are my writing. My daily practice. Like yoga, they keep me sane and strong. If I stop, I will lose the writing muscles I have built. If anything, I need to double-down and write more pages more often.
Here are some strategies I’m using to do that, while overcoming my “fear of the blank page.”
Play with a single word
I sit at my dining room table with my coffee and breakfast. Pen and paper at the ready. But I’m stuck. Then I spot a Northern Flicker out the window. I ponder the various meanings of and associated parts of speech for the word “flicker.”
A flicker of dreams that I vividly experience yet vaguely recall; the images, sensations at the edge of memory; I can’t quite grasp them (noun).
Flickers come to the bird bath, perching on the railing, stretching from this loftier perch; such big birds to be called flickers (noun, red-shafted flicker).
The flickering lights of Ogden in the pre-dawn darkness; red/green alternating, blue pulsing, white shimmering (adjective).
My energy, my interest, my desire flame, fade, and flicker (verb).
And now I have the beginnings of an essay about “flicker.” All thanks to a fun little exercise in word association.
Make a list
Stuck again, I watch the hummingbirds at the feeder and remember how my grandmother loved to sit at her kitchen table and watch the Northern Cardinals at her bird feeder. I write the questions I wished I’d asked before she developed dementia. Or I think of my children (now grown) and write a series of apologies for the divorce that forever changed their lives. But on mornings when I cannot even find the energy for something as creative as those lists, I simply write a “to-do” list:
- Write morning pages
- Cancel Caliber loan autopay
- Wash sheets and towels
- Call Sally
- Text mom and dad about lunch tomorrow
- Practice yoga
- Weed front beds
And lo and behold! —the mundane list jostles my memory: my friend Sally, who received her first radiation treatment for breast cancer yesterday, also lost her husband two years ago and her mother two weeks before she found out about the cancer. How does she bear the unrelenting grief and what I can learn from her? I have an essay idea. Perhaps it’s a morbid epiphany, but it’s one I know that Sally, a fellow writer, would appreciate.
Observe an object
Just as I watch my friend closely to see how she handles her grief, I pay attention to something in front of me (besides the blank page) when I’m stuck (yet again): a cat, a cup of coffee, a hole in the elbow of my LL Bean flannel robe…if I order now, I could have a brand-new Scotch plaid delivered in three days. Only $79 plus shipping and tax. I pause before adding it to my cart. Apart from one elbow, the robe is intact. Better than intact—soft, warm, comfortable. Opting for second chances, I find an iron-on Singer “Patchette” (not recommended for nylon, rayon, or polyester), dust off the iron, and press the warmed plastic into the flannel fibers. Plastic that never softens with use, the patch will outlast the robe.
And suddenly I have the details for a short piece about recycling, repairing, and reusing.
Gone are the days when a bright-fresh-shiny-new morning and the promise of a blank page leaves me stuck. Even really, really stuck. Because now I know a word, a list, or an object have the power to spark something—something instead of curling up in a ball of incapacity and not writing anything at all.
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Becky Jo Gesteland lives in Ogden, Utah, where she is a professor of English at Weber State University. Her work—including Why I get up early—has appeared or is forthcoming in 50 Give or Take, The Brevity Blog, Gravel, Home: Lifespan (Vol. 7), MicroLit, Palaver, Plateau Journal, Rathalla Review, Role Reboot, So to Speak, Visitant, Weber: The Contemporary West, and various scholarly books and journals.
