The Artist's Way

they hiss. Or “What do you expect?” Droughts tell us that
they will last forever—and that we will not. A haunting
anticipation of our own death, approaching long before
we’re ready for it, long before we’ve done anything of
value, shimmers ahead of us like a ghastly mirage.
What do we do? We stumble on. How do we do that? We
stay on the morning pages. This is not a rule for writers
only. (The pages have nothing to do with writing, although
they may facilitate it as they do all art forms.) For all
creative beings, the morning pages are the lifeline—the trail
we explore and the trail home to ourselves.
During a drought, the morning pages seem both painful
and foolish. They feel like empty gestures—like making
breakfast for the lover we know is leaving us anyhow.
Hoping against hope that we will someday be creative
again, we go through the motions. Our consciousness is
parched. We cannot feel so much as a trickle of grace.
During a drought (during a doubt, I just accurately wrote
with a slip of the finger), we are fighting with God. We have
lost faith—in the Great Creator and in our creative selves.
We have some bone to pick, and bones to pick are
everywhere. This is the desert of the heart. Looking for a
hopeful sign, all we see are the hulking remains of dreams
that died along the path.
And yet we write our morning pages because we must.
During a drought, emotions are dried up. Like water, they
may exist somewhere underneath, but we have no access to
them. A drought is a tearless time of grief. We are between