Morning Pages. A Way to be Creative.

I create as a way to deal with blue moods. I write, I draw, I paint. Sometimes when it seems that my mood cannot get any blacker I try to remind myself to do a gratitude list. It helps a little. Taking a walk can clear my head and make me appreciate nature's beauty. Depression can really limit creativity. It is hard to be creative when one is engaged in feeling self-reproach and despair. The last thing I created was a little over a week ago. I journal everyday as a way to deal with various feelings. This helps. I am a fan of Julia Cameron's and many years ago I found out about her book "The Artists Way". The book introduced me to a technique called "morning pages" Morning pages are a daily ritual in which you do three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. The goal is to use the writing to unblock creative impulses. I have been doing it for around ten years. Before doing the pages I had no creative life to speak of. I had no original creative urges. I wrote a little, but with no real consistency. Morning Pages changed all that. Do morning pages decrease blue moods, the kind that have plagued me much of my life? I wish that they did. They do help me to cope by getting in touch with my feelings. Putting it down on paper takes it out of one's head. So I guess that it does help, if only to become aware of the negative thinking and feelings.
I never created original art until I started writing. I did nothing but draw a little, but no original art. Now I can do a number of things that make me creatively productive. I'd like to think that the morning pages did that for me.