Writing an hour everyday (that's the plan)

For the month of December, I am going to write an hour for myself everyday. That includes 30 minutes of anything related to personal writing projects—could be writing blog posts, editing blog posts, figuring out how to use Squarespace, writing to-do lists, reading past works and making comments—and the other 30 minutes are for my Morning Pages.

If you don’t know what Morning Pages are, they’re three handwritten pages written in a notebook. I take about 30 minutes to complete the three pages. The practice was coined by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way. The Morning Pages are for writing down anything—worries, ideas, streams of consciousness, or simply writing “I’ve got nothing to write” until something else sparks onto the page. She says that writing the Morning Pages puts all the stuff that’s inside your head onto the page, and thus you’re less likely to think about those things when you need to sit down and actually do your art (in my case, writing). I can’t say for sure I’m not worrying about stuff when I’m creating, but maybe I’m less so since I’ve started. I’ve only missed one day of the Morning Pages since starting them in July. So that’s a big accomplishment I’d say.

You, the reader, might not be seeing posts everyday, but I’m tinkering away on a daily basis.

This is my tentative plan, which I’ve flexibly followed this week:

645AM: Wakeup | 700-745AM: Work out | 745AM-815AM: Breakfast | 815AM-825AM: Shower | 830-900AM: Morning Pages | 900-930AM: Writing

There isn’t really any idling in this schedule. The YouTuber I’ve been watching might refer to the Breakfast or Shower times as “Active Rest.” I’m not doing anything per se, but I am engaging my mind and body.

An hour a day to myself—that’s what I’m aiming for creatively.