Some years back, a friend of mine introduced me to the Morning Pages.
It's a stream of consciousness exercise where you write three long-hand pages first thing in the morning. No editing. No internal critics. No judgment. No sharing. The pages are your own.
I would write them, truly, first thing in the morning. Pre-coffee, sitting up in bed with the last remnants of sleep still clinging to me, the strangeness of my dreams just beginning to fall away. Most of the time, I would write about my dreams, trace the threads of them as close to their beginning as I could and follow them until the moment I opened my eyes.
When you tend to have really weird dreams, the Morning Pages can make for an excellent morgue file filler.
Last night, I dreamed that I was in some old building that had received a number of bodies from a local prison. The ghosts of the dead prisoners began causing problems, both heinous and harmless. One of them put shaving cream on my cat and shaved the fur off of her head, leaving a sort of reverse mohawk between her ears.
That's when I woke up.
My dreams have been getting stranger and stranger lately. I think it may be time to start keeping a notebook on my night table once again.
Do you write first thing in the morning? Have you done exercises like the Morning Pages? Has it helped your creative output?
1 comment:
My pups lend a bit of chaotic energy first thing in the morning, making it pretty much impossible to pen a single word. I do use dreams for book/story ideas quite often. I find it helps to sort through nightmares, fears, and imagined dreamscapes which work quite well for character backgrounds. (Hugs)Indigo
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