Julia Cameron's morning pages
Morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, done first thing in the morning, about whatever is in your head. There is no prompt and no subject. Julia Cameron's whole point is that you write past the interesting part and keep going until the pages are full.
The prompts Julia Cameron worked from
This is the loosest adaptation in the directory and you should know exactly what it drops. Cameron's morning pages are THREE PAGES, LONGHAND, by hand, with no prompt at all - and she is emphatic about all three. A text thread cannot do longhand, cannot count pages, and cannot offer nothing at all without looking broken. What survives is the shape: first thing, no subject, keep going. Steps takes up to three answers to it, which is the closest this shape comes to 'three pages'. If you want the real practice you need a notebook and a pen, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
- Whatever is on your mind right now - start there, and keep going until you run out. Deliberately not a question. Cameron's practice has no prompt; this exists only to open the page and get out of the way.
What she actually asks for
Three pages. Longhand. First thing in the morning. About anything.
Cameron is unusually strict about the specifics, and each one is doing work. Longhand, because typing is fast enough to let you be clever. Three pages, because the useful material arrives after the material you meant to write. First thing, before the day has given you anything to perform about. And no prompt, because a prompt is a topic, and a topic is a way of avoiding whatever you would have written instead.
She also tells you not to reread them. They are not a record. They are a drain.
What a text thread can and cannot do
It cannot do longhand, and it cannot count pages. Those are two of her three specifics, and losing them is not a detail.
What it can do is the shape - first thing, no subject, keep going - and it can do the one thing a notebook cannot, which is turn up on its own. If the reason your morning pages stopped is that the notebook was in the other room, that is the trade this makes.
If the reason they stopped is that you did not want to write three pages, this will not fix that, and it is not supposed to.
Try these prompts in Steps, free for 30 days — or, if you already have Steps, paste this page's link into your thread and Steps sets them up for you.
People who feel jammed rather than short of ideas, and who write better with nothing in front of them than with a question to answer.
It is not for people who need a way in. A blank prompt is a blank page by another name, and if staring at one is the reason you stopped journaling, one of the question-shaped templates will serve you far better. It is also not a record you will want to reread - Cameron tells you not to.
Cameron sets out morning pages in the first chapter of The Artist's Way, published in 1992 and continuously in print since. She has taught them as the non-negotiable half of the course for thirty years, in her own words and under her own name.
What this template is built on
Curated by Tiago Martins · Last updated: · How we write these
