Experiment: Night Pages
Experiment: Night Pages
If you write “Morning Pages”, I challenge you to flip your schedule, write “Night Pages”, and let me know how it goes.
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What are Morning Pages?
They’re from Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way” which, although I only became aware of it in more recent years, is not new at all.
The basic concept, as I understand it to be, is to begin each day writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness thoughts to clear your mind.
Morning Pages are not intended to be useful or shared with anyone. They’re not even meant to be re-read. That last part is notable. Writers often think of mining old drafts, diary or journal entries for material, but Morning Pages are not meant for this purpose. They are just getting all the randomness out of your system.
My understanding is that the original suggestion is to write longhand which I doubt many do nowadays… I suspect most people’s hands would cramp up about two paragraphs in as we tend to write so little by hand these days.
Maybe this is a more modern take, but the idea of Morning Pages seems to me like a way to clear out all the information bombardment that results in rando neuron firings (misfirings or manipulated firings, really), thoughts that don’t need emphasis, and all the stuff we pick up from the Zeitgeist. These days, we take in far too much data for our human brain which has a finite amount of memory and bandwidth (like short-term RAM).
A positive that I see, in theory, is getting all the obvious stuff to bring to the page out of your system so that when you come to the page in a more serious way you have a greater potential to “make it new” as Ezra Pound famously encourages.
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Given the above… I have a theory— that Morning Pages drain creative energy.
I see some logic in writing Night Pages as a way to purge the daily information we take in and allow ourselves to better rest and recover. I can see this helping us wind down and potentially sleep better. Maybe wishful thinking? Only one way to find out, I suppose.
There is so much on everyone’s mind these days. Think of Night Pages as a brain dump of anxieties and worries and random information you’ve picked up throughout the day. Think of it as a journal entry or diary entry with no clear design or intention for order. It can be chaotic. Like Morning Pages, Night Pages are not intended to be shared with anyone. They are also not intended for any practical application.
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Note: If you think switching your Morning Pages routine to Night Pages will have a negative impact on your wellness, then do not try the experiment.
(a) I’m not suggesting you mess with what works
(b) Don’t risk negative mental health outcomes
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If you try the experiment, please let us know how it goes!
I write afternoon pages! It's so much fun. I have a notebook lying around and when a moment comes when I have the urge to talk to someone, or check the internet, or write an email, or anything that has the purpose of distracting me from my own thoughts, i pick up the notebook and just write what comes. I really enjoy it. Like morning, pages, what i write isn't meant to be read later. And a lot of it is just stream of consciousness. But i love the way I've figured out this method of allowing my own thoughts to come through. Sometimes, i also write night pages, but basically, I more or less just write all day in notebooks--longhand. It actually took me MONTHS to remember how to write longhand! But now i'm thrilled to have that skill again. Writing by hand and hearing my own thoughts, dull or exciting as they may be. it's all good.
I have never been able to come downstairs with morning pages. I’m a nighttime person. The idea of flipping the morning pages concept to night is attractive. And I have a solution for not rereading. I wrote by hand and can barely decipher my own writing when I’m writing fast and hard in pursuit of—the fleeting wonder. Thanks Mark.