The Artist’s Way, a book by Julia Cameron written in the 70’s, still holds so much value in our modern age. Specifically, she asks the reader to work on 3 main goals throughout the book. 1. read a chapter each week and do a few of the tasks she outlines which are mostly creative exercises to get your mind exploring new ways of thinking, 2. take yourself on an “artist’s date” each week as an opportunity to treat yourself and have some fun, and 3. write your “morning pages” first thing every day.

It can be a slog, honestly. There are times where the morning pages come easy and sometimes where I feel bored to near death. It is not meant for publication or, in my opinion, not even a diary tracking your activites and daily life, but it’s a random assortment of words on a page. Maybe about something you need to do today, maybe about something that happened yesterday, or about a dream… or, like I occasionally do, just me saying coffee coffee coffee over and over to get the pages done with.

6 weeks into the book, writing my 3 morning pages each day and I finally felt like some breakthrough was happening and I had something to actually write about. Everything until that point had likely been very repetitive complaining about how I have nothing to write about.

But the morning pages must have some kind of secret code in them. Even in the recent Netflix documentary Stutz, the therapist recommends writing (in an effort to work on your “life force”) when you feel stuck and unsure of what to do. It is a very practical exercise. It gives you something to do, physically, with a pen and paper to help get you unstuck.

Truly, I think the morning pages have changed my life multiple times by helping me to envision a better future for myself. I see repetitive complaints and realize I’m tired of writing about it AGAIN, so I better change something. I see myself wish I had something or for some change and realize, I better make that happen.

Not to mention, the fact that there can be a dullness with daily writing to the point that when something actually sparks my interest and curiosity, I know it’s important.

If you’re feeling stuck, consider reading The Artist’s Way and grab yourself a notebook and get to writing!