Julia Cameron, author for The Artist’s Way and the original muse for this writing habit idea called the morning pages. Three pages of free flow writing, every single day. Write anything, everything. We can probably trace the inspiration lineage of the earlier daily writing habits platforms (like 750words) to her morning pages idea. In many ways - directly or indirectly - 200wad and why we’re all here can be traced back to this little writing movement she started in the 90s. So we can say Julia Cameron is the grand mummy here.

I’d been reading up on my roots. Just a quick Google search reveals the countless many writers who shared their experience of writing morning pages everyday. On 750words, there’s even folks with badges of 3000-day streaks, or 2 million word counts. It’s crazy, yet comforting to know, that we’re all part of this ever widening and flowing stream of words going through this world. 

I’ve not read The Artist’s Way yet, because I got a wrong book which I thought was it. It’s called The Artists’s Way Every Day: A Year of Creative Living, by the same author. It’s a book with daily inspiring words, meditations and tips for each calendar day. This little mistake ended up being quite a blessing, because I love being able to flip to the right date every morning, and discovering whatever new muse it proffered.  

Today’s muse:

August 9

All action require creative energy. As artists, we must learn to think of our energy the way a person thinks about money–am I spending my energy wisely here, investing in this person, this situation, this use of my time? As a rule, artists are temperamentally generous, even spendthrift. This natural inclination must be consciously monitored. An artist must return enough to the inner well to feel a sense of well-being.

Insightful, as always. Thinking about everything as creative energy is indeed a great way to think about our priorities and where we give our attention. I definitely know the feeling of being “temperamentally spendthrift” in my creative energy - I seem to cannot help but be so, especially when others ask that of me. This using of your creativity and the act of creating - it’s a drug, it’s gets addictive with use, yet overuse it and your “inner well” goes dry, and you get super grumpy and useless at the pen or keyboard. A double-edged sword. It feels great to be able to write here, and my word count had been rather high lately (though many words are from book reviews, that is). 

It’s a nice reminder that even while I enjoy being here, I can still leave some for later, and not finish on empty. So that I can some left to come back to. So that I can feel unfinished and restless to come back to create.