How Julia Cameron Sold Me the Morning Pages: The Artist's Way

this letter was a part of my morning pages

“Morning Pages” is a transformative daily practice introduced by Julia Cameron in her 1992 classic, The Artist’s Way.

While originally designed to help artists break through creative blocks, it has since become a global phenomenon used by entrepreneurs, students, and anyone looking to clear their mental “clutter.”

At its simplest, Morning Pages is a daily “brain dump”—a way to sweep the cobwebs out of your mind before you start your day.

I used to write in a notebook as a kid. Slowly, though, I became guilty of being influenced by digitization—of wanting to be cool enough to write in apps like Notion.

Then I felt guilty about that, too.

Eventually, I realized it’s not about the paper, the pen, or the app itself. It’s personal. That’s it.

If you like writing in a notebook—less screen time, of course—do it. If you want to write in apps like Notion, do it there.

Choosing between the two should never become an excuse to not write at all.

Personally, I like to write, but I’m not the kind of person who can carry a notebook everywhere.

My ideas arrive like uninvited guests—and somehow, those surprise me the most.

I’m not very organized either. If I write an idea in a notebook, I forget which notebook. Then the story is gone. Then Bhagwan (God) knows where that notebook is—maybe in the Bay of Bengal. I don’t know.

I usually write in Notion. Actually, I use both—a notebook and Notion. A combination of the two. Notion keeps me organized. I can access it from anywhere, anytime. Just a lot more screen time.

And yes—there’s still a little guilt in that. Haha.

Well, I didn’t adopt morning pages because I was disciplined. I didn’t adopt them because I was spiritual. I am spiritual, but that’s not the reason. I adopted them because, somehow, Julia Cameron made it feel unsafe not to try.

That’s what stayed with me after reading The Artist’s Way.

Not the technique itself—but the way she slipped it into my life without asking for permission.

I’m not easy to convince.

I resist systems.

I distrust anything that sounds like a “practice.”

Yet here I was, waking up, opening a notion and sometimes a notebook, writing nonsense—obediently.

This letter is me reverse-engineering how she did that.

She Didn’t Start With the Tool. She Started With the Ache.

Julia doesn’t open with instructions.

She opens with recognition.

Creative people feel lost. Blocked. Ashamed of the noise in their own heads. Afraid their thoughts are childish, repetitive, or unworthy.

Before she ever mentions morning pages, she names the quiet despair most writers never admit out loud.

“Most of us have been taught to be self-critical far more than self-creative.”

That line doesn’t teach you anything. It exposes you.

Writing lesson hidden in plain sight: People don’t want tools. They want relief.

She Disarms You by Calling Her Own Idea “Pointless”

When she finally introduces the practice, she undercuts it herself:

“An apparently pointless process I call the morning pages.”

That word—pointless—is a masterstroke.

It relaxes the reader.

It lowers the stakes.

It tells your inner skeptic, I see you.

She doesn’t say, This will change your life. She says, Just try this odd little thing.

Writing lesson: If your idea sounds strange, confess it first. Ownership dissolves resistance.

She never announces her credibility. She leaks it.

A decade of practice.Students who won’t give it up “any more than breathing.”

Specific lives. Specific habits. Specific hours.

“I know people who wake at five A.M. to do them.”

There’s no applause in that sentence. That’s why it works.

Authority, when it whispers, feels trustworthy.

What surprised me was this: people were waking up at 5 A.M. to do it. That told me those pages weren’t a chore—they were private territory. Time claimed before the world arrived. A space where things actually moved, and where a deep, unfiltered conversation could happen without interruption.

The Genius of ‘Morning Pages’: The Artist’s Way

To understand the widespread adoption of Morning Pages among the creative elite, one must first examine the environment from which the tool emerged.

Julia Cameron, a seasoned screenwriter and filmmaker who had collaborated with figures like Martin Scorsese—to whom she was briefly married—found herself in a state of “creative death” characterized by alcoholism, cocaine addiction, and a profound sense of professional dislocation.

The development of Morning Pages was born of a “healing impulse,” a desperate attempt to find solace for herself amidst the chaos of a collapsing career and personal trauma.

Cameron’s methodology is rooted in the belief that creativity is a “spiritual practice” and a “basic human drive” that is frequently obstructed by an internalised “censor”—a logic-driven, judgmental voice that discourages risk and promotes perfectionism.

Morning Pages are designed to bypass this censor by overwhelming it with the speed of longhand writing and the volume of a mandatory three-page count.

This practice serves to “uncork” creativity and “sharpen intuition,” allowing the practitioner to move from a state of “unconscious block” to a state of “conscious recovery”.

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Perhaps the most prominent advocate for the transformative power of The Artist’s Way is the author Elizabeth Gilbert.

Gilbert has stated on multiple occasions that her runaway bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love, would not have existed had she not adopted Cameron’s philosophy and routine.

For Gilbert, the twelve-week program outlined in the book served as a roadmap for “healing and freeing the artist within” during a period of intense personal and professional stagnation.

Gilbert’s engagement with Morning Pages is notable for its longitudinal nature.

She has completed the full twelve-week cycle at least three separate times, each time utilizing the pages to navigate different stages of her career, from the initial “thirst” for success to the subsequent “pressure” of maintaining it.

This highlights a crucial insight: Morning Pages are not merely a tool for the “starving artist” but a maintenance protocol for the successful one.

By “rinsing her brain” first thing in the morning, Gilbert can discharge the “imposter syndrome” and the voices of potential critics before she begins her “work” for the day.

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The experience of screenwriter and director Brian Koppelman, the creator of the hit series Billions and writer of Rounders, provides a more technical perspective on the utility of Morning Pages, particularly for those managing neurodivergence.

Koppelman has spoken extensively about his struggle with ADHD, describing the sensation of being “blocked” as a “toxic” state that spreads into one’s relationships and self-worth.

Before adopting the Morning Pages routine at age thirty, Koppelman felt like a failure, unable to focus on the “long slog” required to finish a screenplay.

Koppelman’s adoption of the practice represented a “binary difference” in his life.

He describes the Pages as a way to “unlock that part of yourself that’s the most creative” by engaging in an “unexpected self-dialogue”.

His specific variation—writing line by line for three pages without stopping and refusing to read them back for at least five years—serves to “trap the bullshit” that stops most writers from starting.

Rules So Simple You Can’t Fail

Three pages.

Longhand.

Stream of consciousness.

That’s it.

She even gives you permission to write badly.

To complain.

To repeat yourself. To whine.

“Nothing is too trivial, too silly, too stupid.”

She wrote:

Your artist is a child, and it needs to be fed. Morning pages feed your artist child. So write your morning pages.

Three pages of whatever crosses your mind—that’s all there is to it. If you can’t think of anything to write, then write, “I can’t think of anything to write. . . .” Do this until you have filled three pages. Do anything until you have filled three pages.

Perfectionism has nowhere to hide.

Writing lesson:

*Adoption lives on the far side of simplicity.

She Names the Enemy, So You Stop Blaming Yourself

Then comes the most important move:

The Censor.

Let me tell you what the Censor actually is.

It’s not your enemy in the dramatic sense.

It’s older than you.

Quieter than fear.And far more convincing.

A voice.

A character.

A cartoon villain.

Now the problem isn’t you. It’s an intruder.

“The Censor is a cartoon monster. Starve him.”

Once the enemy has a face, the reader has courage.

People don’t fight abstractions.

They fight villains.

The Censor is the voice that shows up after your first thought.

Not the idea—but the commentary.

The part of you that says, “That’s stupid,” before you’ve even finished the sentence.

It speaks in reason. That’s why it’s dangerous.

The Censor doesn’t scream. It explains. It sounds sensible. Responsible. Also Adult.

It tells you it’s protecting you—from embarrassment, from failure, from wasting time.

What it’s really protecting is familiarity.

The Censor comes from the same place that once kept us alive. The part of the brain that scans the meadow for predators. Anything unfamiliar looked risky. Anything original looked unsafe.

So when you write something new, the Censor leans in and says, “People like this won’t take you seriously.”“This isn’t how it’s supposed to sound.”“You already peaked.”

That voice is not the truth. It’s leftover survival wiring.

Here’s the thing most people miss: You cannot argue with the Censor. It gets smarter when you do.

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"You cannot censor yourself. And you don't read pages back for at least five years... what ends up happening is you become freed of whatever the bullshit that's stopping you." — Brian Koppelman

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Every improvement you make, it upgrades itself.

You write one good paragraph—it tells you that it was luck.

You draw one decent sketch—it compares you to Picasso.

You ship one honest idea—it reminds you of everyone who’s better.

So Morning Pages don’t fight the Censor. They exhaust it.

Three pages. By hand— type or write.

No stopping.

You move faster than judgment.

You write before the Censor has time to dress itself up as logic.

And because there is no wrong way to do it, its opinion stops mattering.

The Censor can talk. Let it.

Write that too.

The goal isn’t silence. It’s distance.

Eventually, the voice loses its authority. You start hearing it for what it is—not wisdom, not reason, but a blocking device.

That’s when something quieter shows up.

That’s the voice you were trying to reach all along.

Morning Pages don’t make you creative.

They just move the guard out of the doorway.

Cameron has shared that her own inner critic is named "Nigel," whom she imagines as a "British interior designer with impossibly lofty standards" to help her dismiss his opinions.

She Repeats Until the Idea Becomes Muscle Memory

Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.

— Robbie Gass

“There is no wrong way.”

“Just write.”

“Keep your hand moving.”

“Three pages.”

This isn’t filler.

It’s noble conditioning.

By the time you close the chapter, your body already knows what to do.

To write the three pages.

Morning pages map our own interior. Without them, our dreams may remain terra incognita. I know mine did. Using them, the light of insight is coupled with the power for expansive change. It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action. The pages lead us out of despair and into undreamed-of solutions.— The Artist’s Way

Julia Cameron didn’t sell me morning pages.

She removed every reason I had to refuse them.

She named my pain.

Lowered my defenses.Made failure impossible.

Gave my fear a face.

And asked for the smallest act of trust imaginable.

That’s not teaching.

That’s craft.

The Three-Page Mandate: Structural Rationale

The requirement of exactly three pages longhand is the most frequently contested aspect of the morning pages protocol.

Practitioners often attempt to compromise with one or two pages or exceed the limit by writing five or six.

However, the three-page threshold is a calculated structural necessity designed to exhaust the superficial ego and force a breakthrough into deeper psychological territory.

The Progression of the Three Pages

The pages function as a sequential descent into the subconscious.

Each page serves a specific psychological purpose, and the premature cessation of writing prevents the “magic” from occurring.

Page One: The Social Persona. The first page is typically dominated by “surface thoughts”—to-do lists, mundane complaints, and obvious preoccupations. It is the level of the “grocery list,” where the ego vents about the cat’s litter box, the funny knock in the car, or a petty annoyance with a colleague or a neighbour.

Page Two: The Resistance. As the writer exhausts the obvious surface content, they encounter “the wall.” This is the point where the mind begins to complain about the exercise itself. The writer may find themselves writing “I don’t know what to write” repeatedly. This boredom and irritation are signs that the Censor is attempting to discourage the process.

Page Three: The Breakthrough. It is generally around the “2.5-page mark” that the superficial mind is finally exhausted. Forced to continue, the brain is compelled to reach deeper. It is here that breakthrough thinking happens—where unexamined fears, sudden solutions to complex problems, and “authentic truth” finally emerge.

The three-page limit is also a safeguard against “navel-gazing” and “ego-filling”.

Julia Cameron cautions against writing more than three pages to prevent the practitioner from dwelling excessively on their own neuroses.

The goal is a “drain flush,” not a “deep dive” into self-indulgence.

Writing four or more pages can turn a cleansing ritual into a narcissistic fixation, whereas writing fewer than three ensures that the writer never moves past the shallow water of their own ego.

Why Write at All?

For the creative practitioner, the act of writing is not a choice, but a biological function as essential as the liver or intestine.

The question of “why write” is answered by the stark reality of the creative condition: the alternative is a slow, spiritual decay.

Writing as Survival and Aggression

Charles Bukowski characterized the life of a writer as a choice between the page and the “bridge”—a literal and figurative suicide.

For those whom the creative impulse has claimed, not writing is “death,” while writing is “life”. Bukowski argued that writers are “desperate people,” and when they stop being desperate, they stop being writers.

His durability—writing for 25 years before being discovered—highlights the “itch” that must be scratched regardless of recognition.

Joan Didion identified writing as a “fraught business” and an “occasion of daily dread”. She viewed the act of setting words on paper as an “aggressive, even hostile act”—an attempt to impose one’s “I” upon the world and wrench around someone else’s mind.

Didion wrote “entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I see, and what it means... what I want, and what I fear”. Without the “mastery of the language,” the ability to think for oneself is lost.

The Discipline of the True Sentence

Ernest Hemingway conceptualized the writer’s job as “telling the truth”. When faced with “blank terror,” he would remind himself: “All you have to do is write one true sentence.

Write the truest sentence that you know”. This “severe discipline” required the ruthless removal of “scrollwork or ornament”—the polished lies the brain uses to look sophisticated.

The morning pages facilitate this truth-telling by providing a space where “sweetness” and “ornament” are discarded in favor of the raw, simple declarative sentence.

Sylvia Plath’s journals reveal a voice that “will not be still,” a need to “order life” in sonnets and sestinas to provide a “verbal reflector” for the “60-watt lighted head”.

She viewed the inability to write as a “stinking pile” of unpublished potential that leads to madness.

For Plath, Didion, and Hemingway, the word was a weapon against the “colossal job of merely living”.

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The morning pages are not a luxury; they are a prerequisite for the creative life.

To neglect them is to choose to live in a state of “unregulated nervous system” and “social dishonesty”. 

The “brutality” of the three-page requirement and the early morning hour is the price of admission for access to the authentic self.

The practice functions as a “mental shower,” a “drain cleaner,” and a “machine gun” against the rats of creative stagnation.

It is the process by which the artist “takes their own emotional temperature” and decides whether to remain a “usable body” in the 9-to-5 machine or to become the “hero of their own shit”.

The morning pages leading us out of despair and into "undreamed-of solutions" is not merely a spiritual claim but a neurobiological reality.

For a young writer like me, the choice is simple:

either perform the daily extraction of the soul or succumb to the "slow death" of the unexpressed life.

The graves are full of baked potatoes—bright minds that never cleared the mess before the oven door shut.

Morning pages make sure your creative voice doesn’t stay trapped as a quiet thought or a half-remembered dream. They force it onto the page, loud enough to be heard.

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Thanks for genuine reading

Bishal Lama