The Artist's Way

By contrast, if we are suddenly and madly in love, the
morning pages may seem threatening. We don’t want to
puncture the fragile and shiny bubble of our happiness. We
want to stay lost in the sea of a blissful us rather than be
reminded that there is an I in the we (or an “eye” in the we)
that is temporarily blinded.
In short, extreme emotions of any kind—the very thing
that morning pages are superb for processing—are the usual
triggers for avoiding the pages themselves.
Just as an athlete accustomed to running becomes irritable
when he is unable to get his miles in, so, too, those of us
accustomed now to morning pages will notice an irritability
when we let them slide. We are tempted, always, to reverse
cause and effect: “I was too crabby to write them,” instead
of, “I didn’t write them so I am crabby.”
Over any considerable period of time, the morning pages
perform spiritual chiropractic. They realign our values. If we
are to the left or the right of our personal truth, the pages
will point out the need for a course adjustment. We will
become aware of our drift and correct it—if only to hush the
pages up.
“To thine own self be true,” the pages say, while busily
pointing that self out. It was in the pages that Mickey, a
painter, first learned she wanted to write comedy. No
wonder all her friends were writers. So was she!
Chekhov advised, “If you want to work on your art, work
on your life.” That’s another way of saying that in order to
have self-expression, we must first have a self to express.