1 August 2002: Day One

Jupiter enters Leo today. Leo being my Fifth House Governer, this seems to me an auspicious time to begin a Creative Experiment.

I’ve done Morning Pages on and off for the past five years or so. Morning Pages were popularized by Julie Cameron in her fabulous book The Artist’s Way. The process is simple: three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing every morning. No corrections, no proofreading, no audience. The results are magic. A month or so of morning pages, and the level of creativity and happiness in my life starts climbing dramatically. And so does my ability to manifest my will in the world.

I’ve done my Morning Pages every single day for about two months now. One of the symptoms of the resultant increase in creativity has been this journal. But there is a problem: lots of inspiration, but not enough time to follow through on it. I was able to update this journal daily when I first started it, because I was taking a fair amount of time off from work for the Midyear Quickening. But since my life has returned to its usual pace, I’ve only done a single entry. What good is inspiration if I can’t do anything with it? So: an experiment. Two months of Morning Pages have primed my creative pump, but what if they are no longer necessary? Once the pump is pumping properly, does it need continual priming? Or is the priming only needed if the pump has been left largely unused for a while (as my creativity had been)? What if – and this is the crux of the matter – what if it is not Morning Pages per se that increase my happiness and my ability to manifest my will? What if it is simply the act of creative writing? I know that God means for me to write, and I know that when I am doing the will of God, I am happier and all kinds of cool stuff begins to manifest in my life.

The Hypothesis: the salubrious effects that Morning Pages have upon my life can equally well be attained by spending the same amount of time (around 45 minutes, usually) engaged in any sort of writing every morning, as long as that writing meets the following conditions:
1. I do it every day;
2. I really put 45 minutes or more of uninterrupted attention into it;
3. I allow it to flow, with little or no self-censorship;
4. I write what I really want to write.

The Experiment: instead of writing Morning Pages, I will write in this journal, or write poetry or other material to post in the appropriate sections of this site, in a manner that meets the above conditions.

This experiment will continue as long as my hypothesis appears to be holding true – i.e., as long as I continue to find myself happy, lucky, and inspired. Which means you’ll be hearing a lot more from me, though it may be less polished than what’s come before it (on account of Condition Three).

"You’ll be hearing a lot more from me," I say, and it occurs to me that I don’t know exactly whom I’m addressing. To the best of my knowledge, my only readers are Geminica and Lexicat (and who could ask for a more worthy audience than those two most exquisite and radiant personages?), but perhaps there are more of you, lurking in the shadows, watching, waiting, hungry... sometimes in the night I catch glimpses of your gleaming yellow eyes, or hear you on the hilltops from afar, howling for my blood...

Um... no... wait... I’m sorry, I seem to have confused you, my friends and hypothetical readers, with those... other things... of whom I will speak no more.

This, by the way, is the sort of stuff that shows up in my Morning Pages all the time... I guess now it’s going to be showing up here. Lucky you.

Okay, that’s my 45-minutes-or-so for Day One.