Week-Ending: A Commonplace Book

I've always thought that Morning Pages, as suggested in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, were a brilliant way to get the mind out of the way of the writer's imagination. Which is why I was tickled pink to find this much earlier positing of the same idea in Brenda Ueland's classic book on writing:

That is why I think it is good to keep a diary. I don't mean a "had lunch" diary. But do this: write every day, or as often as y ou possible can, as fast and carelessly as you possibly can, without reading it again,a nything you happened to have thought, seen or felt the day before.


In six months look at it. A drawer full of paper will ahve accumulated. You will see that what you have written with the most slovenly freedom - in those parts there will be vitality, brilliance, beauty.

from:
Brenda Ueland
IF YOU WANT TO WRITE