I’ve kept a journal practically my whole life. From the early beginnings in one of those sweet diaries locked with a little key to notebooks filled with blather, writing down my thoughts and feelings has been an affirming and comforting thing as long as I can remember.
In the 70s Christina Baldwin, who lived in Minneapolis, wrote “One to One: Self understanding through journal writing.” She was a popular workshop leader in those days of self-examination and therapy. I remember many of the things I learned from that book and her workshops. She maintained you could help yourself by writing through the issues in your life. She also encouraged “journalers” to make their journals more than just writing if they wanted to, creating a work of art with drawing, photos and fancy covers—or not. It gave me legitimacy for the messy and voluminous journals I kept.
Those writings did help me, I remember. There is something about writing it down that gets the thought or feeling out of your head and out there to look at more objectively. Sometimes those journals were the only place I had to say what I really thought, that’s still true today. I also remember she gave permission to journal whenever one felt like it instead of compulsively every day.
Fast forward to New Mexico, 1992. Julia Cameron, a journalist and Hollywood scriptwriter, was holed up near Taos with a terrible case of writers block, re-examining her life like so many people drawn to the that part of the country in those days. Me included. Out of her frustration came an enlightened creation, “The Artist’s Way: A spiritual path to higher creativity.” Her methods for helping one get along in life described the way artists of all kinds worked through their problems—using their art as the medium.
Her book, which can be used alone or along with others in a support group, started with several basic tasks –one of them was journaling. She put an additional spin on it calling it “the morning pages–three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream of consciousness.” Three pages exactly—no more, no less. If I can’t fill three pages with sentences I write “blah, blah,blah” just to keep it flowing. The writing is almost never reread and never taken seriously.
Cameron maintains this, along with a few other suggestions in the book, will unblock creativity.
This is my therapy at this point in my life. The pages are like magic. I buy those cheap black and white composition books with the wide lines. Three pages of longhand on thin lines are too much for me. At least once a week I set aside some time in the morning (for some reasonit doesn’t seem to work so well at other times of the day) to do this stream of consciousness writing. It doesn’t seem to matter what is written, the important thing is to keep the pen moving.
All sorts of drivel winds up there, but that’s not the point. The point is it seems to open up the mind and all those things that were worrying or frustrating course I am a writer, but Cameron insists it works just as well for any artist working in any medium.
It’s not that answers to problems come like a flash, but more like the mind is then free to create something new and fresh. I can’t explain how this works, but it works for me. I also like her assertion that creativity is a spiritual thing meant for all of us.spiritual thing meant for all of us.
Nov. 10, 2001