It’s 6 something in the morning. Córdoba in summer, so the first thing I do is open the window, because that hour is the only cool one the day has left.
Then I lie down on the sofa, pick up my phone, and write until I feel like stopping.
Some mornings that’s 5 minutes. Some mornings it’s one line.
By Julia Cameron’s rules I’m doing this wrong in about 4 different ways.
What she actually asks for
Three pages. Longhand. First thing, before the phone, ideally before coffee. Don’t reread them for 8 weeks. Don’t show them to anyone.
That’s the whole practice. I wrote the long version of it here if you want the rules properly explained.
The Artist’s Way came out in 1992 and has sold more than 6 million copies, most of them on the back of that one exercise. The rules work. They work for a lot of people.
They’ve never worked for me.
The window, the sofa, the phone
I’d rather write on the laptop. Better keyboard, better screen, better everything.
I never do it. Opening the laptop at 6am means opening the day: the mail is in there, the work is in there, and the quiet is gone before I’ve written a word.
So the phone wins, for the least romantic reason available. It’s the thing I’ll actually pick up with my eyes half open.
A habit doesn’t survive on being the best version. It survives on being the version you’ll do before you’re properly awake.
What comes out
Something that worried me yesterday. A description of the day before, when the day before had something in it. What I’m planning to do today, which is usually a list pretending to be a thought.
And plenty of mornings it’s just thoughts in a row, and the entry doesn’t make sense as a whole.
There’s no structure to any of it. I think that’s the good part.
Why the morning and not some other hour
The day hasn’t started. That’s the entire reason.
At 6 I have the space. By 10 I don’t, because there’s work and there are people and there are things that have to happen.
It’s the same with training. I do it first or I don’t do it at all. Not because mornings are magic, but because once it’s done it stops sitting in my head, and the rest of the day gets to be about something else.
Paper is better, and I still don’t use it
Here’s the honest part. I’ve tried the notebook many times, and I prefer writing by hand. It feels better. Cameron is right about that, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise to defend my own setup.
The problem arrives later. A notebook has no way back in. I can’t search it. I can’t ask it what I was thinking on this date 3 years ago. It ends up on a shelf, a beautiful object I never open again.
So the trade is simple. Paper wins the writing. Files win the years.
I picked the years.
On this day
Cameron says don’t reread for 8 weeks. I reread constantly, and it’s my favourite thing about the whole habit.
Cozy has an “On this day” view, so before I write anything I usually read what I wrote on this same date 1, 2 and 3 years ago. They’re plain files sitting on my own disk, which is the only reason they’re still readable at all.
What I found in there is the part I didn’t expect. The thoughts repeat by season. Same month, same weather, same kind of head. A grey week reads like a grey week whichever year it belongs to, and I clearly have a February version of myself I keep meeting.
Eight weeks of silence protects you from editing yourself. Fine. But 3 years of distance isn’t editing, and it’s the only way I’ve found to see the pattern instead of the day.
A rule is a ramp for one person and a wall for another
I think this depends entirely on the person, and most advice about journalling pretends it doesn’t.
Some people need a rule to start. A line, a question, a number. Without it they spend the whole morning deciding how to begin and never begin. For them “3 pages” is a gift, because it takes the deciding away.
For me a boundary is the thing that kills it. If I have to write 3 pages every day, I’ll manage a week, quit, and then feel vaguely guilty about it for a month.
So my rule is: write something, or write nothing. Both count. On the days I have nothing to say, I have nothing to say, and the notebook doesn’t get to argue.
If the blank page is the hard part, a prompt is a fine way in.
What it actually does
I don’t feel relief. People describe that and I’ve never had it. Nothing lifts.
What happens is slower and duller and more useful. The more I write in the mornings, the sharper I am for the rest of the day. The ideas come out cleaner. I talk better with people, because I already had to put the thing into words once, alone, at 6am, with the window open.
That’s the whole return. Not calm, clarity.
Three pages would probably give me the same thing. I’d just never do them.