4. 'Even before meditation, writing'

This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: Getting up. Subscribe free below.

My most useful habit is one I’ve built over a decade. It’s very simple: It consists of writing three pages longhand in a notebook, first thing* every morning**. (*After making coffee. **Usually.) This practice is called morning pages, and I got it from that therapist I told you about earlier—“Even before meditation, writing,” he would say—who got it from The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron.

You’re not writing about anything in particular, or for anyone. You can journal if you want, or free associate, or describe your crush(es), or wheeze about your shoulder. The main thing is you don’t plan or edit or revise. You write, and then you’re done. And in doing this you build the muscle memory to go—no self-censor, no doubts, no judgment. No stakes. This effect, like any form of training, accretes almost invisibly over time.

Ten years of morning pages.

It has other benefits (like demonstrating that your brain’s generative ability is endless and you don’t need to be precious or hoarding about it), but that go reflex is the big one. Maybe it’s because I’m such an editor—hyperattuned to error; wary of committing anything imperfect to the page—but nothing I do has served me better, in any dimension of my life. When I started writing a novel, I had no idea how. Didn’t matter: jumped in. Same with my first triathlon—get in the pool, see what happens. It was also useful when I started managing people at work. Guess what? The first pages were boring and the first miles were slow. But they happened.

Reduction, synthesis, editing, clarification: These stages of creative work (and their analogues in movement) are vital. But they all build upon the start.

Coming Tuesday: Improvising.

Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com.