Sometimes I forget the simple bubbles of contentment that
float from my core when I sit at my kitchen table when the day is new and
write, free flow, without thinking, for three pages. Julia Cameron taught me
about “morning pages” about twelve years ago. I wish I could say in that entire
time I have been completely faithful to the practice, but that would not be
true.
Natalie Goldberg simplified it when I finally read her book,
Writing Down the Bones. I resisted this book for the longest time
because I didn’t like the title. When I finally surrendered to it because
everyone told me I should read it, I not only liked it, I loved it. I cried
when I was finished. She taught me I could write any time of day, with a timer perhaps, and aim to fill a 90 page notebook in a month. Basically, morning pages without the morning attached.
I got a new kitchen table at a yard sale last weekend and this morning was the first time I tried it out with my notebook. It felt beyond words wonderful.
It was like stacking all the notebooks I have loved and used up over these past twelve years were sitting in an audience applauding me for making the choice to sit at my kitchen table and write. Not to rush around vocalizing and annoying my children as they prepare for their school day, but to simply let things be and let words flow.
It doesn’t take a long time and I feel so much better all day long simply because I let those words fall off my pencil and onto the page. Not on a keyboard, but the old fashioned way.
I think back to the many writers across time who sat at kitchen tables and wrote in little snippets of time, selfishly unselfish when she or he might have been dusting or folding laundry or writing a business plan or corralling children.
Yes, I meant to say “selfishly, unselfish” because sometimes being selfish is the absolute least selfish thing we can do for the world. I know my contributions today will be offered with more positivity and love if I hadn’t simply taken the few moments to let the words inside me out, to set them free on the page, letter after letter after word after word after sentence after paragraph after page.
Writers and Non-writers alike - Tell me about your resistance or your enjoyment in daily free flow “without a purpose” writing.
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© 2013 Julie Jordan Scott
