Monsters From the Deep

So my Creativity Course got off to a roaring start and the first thing we have to do is learn to write 'Morning Pages'.  Writing Morning Pages is a technique in which you empty the subconscious, sort of vomit it onto the page, at least once a day. Preferably you do it first thing in the morning, without thinking, judging or editing your work.  It's not a new idea - one wonders whether artists and writers have been at something similar since the first troubador hiked his wares at the castle gate.

Since the first troubadour...

There are various famous works one could learn from - the journals of Virginia Woolf, to name but one, and Dorothea Brande's brilliant classic 'Becoming A Writer'. Out of print now and hellishly expensive, it's still worth looking out for. DB gives those wonderful pep talks so redolent of old black and white movies. "If you fail repeatedly at this exercise, give up writing. Your resistance is actually greater than your desire to write." Superb, no doubt spoken with a cut-glass accent, it almost makes one feel like a grown up.

Dear, Dear Dorothea...

 Natalie Goldberg also gives some great advice about writing practice, very Zen, and I refer to 'Wild Mind' constantly, a decade after buying it. However, in the year 2013, when artists talk of 'doing their pages', they usually mean, doing their pages a la Julia Cameron.

For the next 16 weeks it's Julia's way of doing pages that I shall be sticking with, day in, day out, or stand up and explain at the weekly 'Check In.'

After working my way slowly through the larder and chomping everything that's not nailed down, I finally get to it, scribbling all the dismal, unfulfilled truths about my writing and my writing past, all the unfinished works, the plummeting self confidence, the 'Monsters from the Deep' who said, or thought foul things. The ones that looked at me in some awful way, or so I believed at the time. It doesn't feel good to get it out there. I was raised in the 'Keep Calm and Don't Mention a Thing' school of optimism. It's hard to believe, right now that in 112 days my creativity will be as high as one of those old Barage Balloons you see in Foyle's War. But, as the man himself would say, with that wry and rather sexy smile, 'We'll see.'

Monsters from the Deep

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices 

Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809-1892

Morning Pages - The Bootcamp

Dawn on the River Thames, A Week In

 A week into Morning Pages and I find I rise earlier and see the dawn more often. My Morning Pages are already less bitter and less whiney. Of course, part of the point of writing Morning Pages is to free the creative channels of bitterness and whining. It's like a morning shower for the creative consciousness. It doesn't  matter one jot whether the mess on the page turns out to be vaguely readable or thoroughly vile. The point is to apply backside to seat and do them each day. Three pages is the recommended stretch, but I wonder whether each writer finds their own best length. The point is, it should be slightly more than you want to do. Keep going, no punctuation, no editing, be specific, allow the monsters to surface, then drive right on.

The Monsters Drive Right On

Having managed, some days with difficulty, to keep Morning Pages going, I admit that that a strange, tentative freedom creeps into my creative work. I've had some odd moments of synchronicity this week - yes, you dismiss them as coincidence if you will, but then, if I were going to deride the results of the Creativity Course there wouldn't be much point in doing it, would there? Sometimes the Morning Pages divert themselves into scenes from my novel, as though the subconscious, like Kevin when at Perry's house, (for Harry Enfield fans) has finally given in. 'Might as well do this writing thing then, and are there any Ginger Nuts please Missus?'

Dawn at Kings Cross Station

 I've begun to notice odd, whimsical things that only the child-like free spirit of oneself would find titter-worthy - for example, the hordes of adults who queue at Kings Cross station all summer,  paying out a fortune to have their photo taken by Platform Nine and Three Quarters, suddenly disappear - presumably to pack their own kids off to school. Which leads me to wonder whether, if I sneak up there one misty morning this week, will I hear the faint sound of that special chuffa train...

My dear friend Carmen, surely the most potent of creative enablers, bought me a great new notebook and three pens that positively snarl off the page. Carmen doesn't know I've started Morning Pages.  Or even that I'm a writer. Weird.

Pens that Positively Snarl

Finally, I received a birthday present, a much-longed for addition to the Pittam Towers arsenal which bowled me over, as I hadn't expected anything nearly so generous. It was a Kindle Fire which came with, amongst other things, a free download of 'Music for the Mozart Effect' - 'Unlock the Creative Spirit'.

So with synchronicity increasing and creative impulses beginning to stir again I feel ready for this week's challenge which is, I believe, the 'Artist's Date.'

                                                       

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air

 

W. B. Yeats 1895-1939