Hello Writer,
If you’re looking for the best way to bring your life and your writing into some kind of effective, productive, joyful balance, establish a Daily Pages practice.
If you’re interested in a slower pace, make sure you read all the way through to the part where I talk about Frequent Pages.
What’s the Daily Pages practice and how do you do it?
Simply put, the Daily Pages practice is a journaling habit that you get to indulge in every day. It requires a notebook or journal, a pen, and a place to write.
Any notebook or journal will do. Get fancy. Go old school. Find something in between. I like a single-subject notebook, college ruled. Some of my clients like hardcover journals. Size doesn’t really matter, but if you want to get the most out of the process, 8.5 x 11 pages are going to give you more room to think, feel, and breathe.
You’re going to be writing by hand, so find a pen that feels really good moving across the paper. If it runs too fast or slow, it can be distracting.
Yes, you have to write by hand. It’s not the same when you type your thoughts and feelings on a keyboard. It goes faster but you’re just cheating yourself of a deeper, more valuable experience.
Here are two articles about why writing by hand is so good for your brain.
I find this information fascinating.
Psychology TodayScientific AmericanWhat makes the Daily Pages practice so powerful?
The answer is right there in the title; it’s a daily practice. When you practice something every day, you get really, really good at it. Over time, you grow and change and get stronger. The benefits increase exponentially the more you exercise this writing muscle, and they last a very long time.
The more you check in with yourself, explore your thoughts and feelings, experiment with forgiving yourself, and remind yourself what is important to you and why, the greater the opportunity to deepen your self-respect, develop self-esteem, and exercise the kind of perspective that can boost your self-confidence.
If you skipped over the buttons above that link to articles about why writing is so damn good for you, scroll up real quick and gift yourself with a click and a read.
The Daily Pages practice puts you first.
It’s a deeply personal habit that helps you prioritize yourself for a change.
I encourage everyone to develop their own Daily Pages practice.
I’ve been leading journaling workshops and using Daily Pages to help writers embrace their creative identities and hone their storytelling skills since 2016. My own habit goes even further back.
Here’s what I’ve observed:
The Daily Pages practice provides comfort in times of grief and heartbreak, courage in times of career jags and financial struggles, and celebration in times of achievement and success.
Given time, good things take root, grow, and spread their beauty – things like confidence, self-respect, perspective, problem solving, appreciation for the authentic self. and the ability to get to the heart of an issue quickly.
If you’re a serious writer or would like to become one …
… I believe it’s absolutely essential to have a reason to show up to the page – any page – as often as humanly possible. Commit to writing in your Daily Pages notebook for 30 days and see what happens.
Writers know: There are days when the words just won’t come. Your WIP stands like a monolith, looming in your psyche with no way in, no soft edges to feel around, and no clue for you regarding what to do next.
This is when the Daily Pages feel like a lifeline.
For those of us who are elbows deep in writing anything from books to blogs to short story collections, the Daily Pages notebook is a way to work on our WIPs without directly working on our WIPs.
That notebook is a great place to play with the finer details of world building, trace character arcs across the light and into dark shadows, chase plot bunnies up mountains and down, and fill in gaping plot holes with captivating cleverness.
For writers like you, the ROI for having a solid Daily Pages practice includes:
◊ Giving yourself greater access to your creativity.
◊ Training yourself to turn up to the page on a regular basis, just like a real writer.
◊ Training your friends and family members to make space for you to turn up to the page on a regular basis – because they respect you for respecting yourself as a real writer.
◊ Building a scaffold for your WIP (Work in Progress).
◊ Working through plot holes and other WIP challenges.
◊ Having an incredibly powerful tool at your fingertips to get you through writer’s block, vacations, holidays, and other life-y things that pop up to pull you away from writing projects.
The best part is you can do all of this on your own.
If you’d like some guidance to avoid emotional ruts, mental looping inside your journal, or being negatively affected by what you write, reach out to me; I know how to help you have a truly rewarding journaling experience.
When you work with a coach like me, the results are even better.
They include life-affirming tools like:
◊ A process for moving through difficult emotions.
◊ A process for identifying what you want for yourself.
◊ A process for moving towards what you want.
◊ A process for developing a greater sense of confidence in your ability to navigate your life.
◊ A process for turning your dream of becoming a writer into the reality of being a writer.
BONUS: You can tap into each process as you need it, across your life, for the rest of your life.
Schedule a conversation with me to find out whether you’d like private sessions or a small group situation to explore the benefits of guided and directed journaling.
CONTACT METhe hardest part is getting started. We’ve got Frequent Pages to help with that. Keep reading.
Sometimes, you just have to ease into a new habit …
… especially if you want it to stick.
Life gets busy and time is a construct and what you’re in the mood for today isn’t necessarily what you’re going to be in the mood for tomorrow and there are all these other people on the planet who want to do time-consuming things like talk to you and eat with you and show they care about you and it’s not always easy to write in a journal every single day.
That’s why I also encourage everyone to consider a Frequent Pages practice if a Daily Pages practice is just not realistic right now.
You can always grow into a daily habit from a frequent one. Or maybe you’re the kind of person who will get the most out of this practice if you do it every other day or three days a week or even five. Just test both ways before you decide.
