The cheapest creative reset I’ve ever tried
I honed in on my writer’s voice with ‘morning pages’
For most of my twenties, I was a night writer. When the rest of the world clocked out, I’d disappear, sometimes with a little tequila, sometimes wine, and that’s when my best work turned up. I never questioned my writing techniques before. It was just how I worked.
Then I turned 30, and the ritual writing didn’t come as easy after midnight anymore. Words formed slower, if at all, to be honest. I’d sit there searching for inspo instead of just writing — which, if you’ve ever done, you know it’s a special kind of exhausting. I wasn’t creating anything. I was playing the waiting game.
While I waited and waited, my writing tone changed. The style I used to love — loose, conversational, a little messy, maybe some rambling (in the best way), started tightening up. It got stiffer and more ‘proper’. I keep wondering if that’s what happens when you get older, or if that loose writing had anything to do with simply just being younger back then.
I do read a lot. Bloggers, small independent writers, the big names. And there’s a pattern. A lot of smaller writers, myself included in the mix, unconsciously mimic whoever’s trending right now, or whoever we’re reading at the moment. We all start sounding eerily similar.
Then you have AI bombarding us, and it made the problem worse. Once you learn to spot that particular rhythm; the smoothed-out, slightly-too-polished cadence — you can’t unsee it. Even these em-dashes that I’ve used since I was 19 make me feel like I’m another ChatGPT bot.
And the more I noticed this ‘formal tone’ out in the world, the more I caught it sneaking into my own drafts. The way an accent rubs off on you after enough exposure, this is what this ‘new style’ of writing was doing to me. I needed a reset. A way back to whatever it was I sounded like before all this generic writing.
If I was 23 again, I would’ve booked a flight to Spain, worked up random conversations with people, and let a new city revive me. But I’m not in a position to do that right now. What is realistic sits on my shelf: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. If you write and haven’t heard of it, here’s the short version. Cameron published her book/self-guided course back in ’92, and one tool from it has become a ritual for artists everywhere: Morning Pages.
In the words of author Julia Cameron:
Three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning.
There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. They are not high art. They are not even “writing”.
They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only.
Do not overthink Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow.
Simple enough? You don’t have to write with structure. You don’t have to show anyone. There’s no pressure to constantly go back and edit your grammar. Just get the words out on the damn paper.
I did it for a week.
My head is quieter, in the sense that my thoughts aren’t so scattered. I think that was the biggest change. Those negative, looping thoughts that used to roam around my brain now live in these pages no one ever gets to see. Instead of those thoughts haunting me every time I sit down to write, they’re stuck in my morning journal, freeing up space for the good stuff. It’s a relieving feeling seeing a bad thought locked away.
My real rambling voice; unpolished, unfiltered, the one that’s been cooped up for years is finally performing for the page. It’s not the exact voice I had at 23. I don’t think that one’s ever coming back. But something is coming back. A different version of it. It’s a little older, maybe a little rougher, still figuring itself out. But it’s mine. Not borrowed from whoever I read last. And not ‘touched up’ by Grammarly or ChatGPT.
Why I’m telling you this.
If you’re a writer who feels like something is off, something isn’t clicking with your work that used to before all this AI, or if you’re writing is sounding like everyone else’s, I can’t promise you that Morning Pages will be the quick fix in a week. It didn’t fix everything for me. It just cleared enough space for me to hear myself think again.
Pick up your pen and give yourself three pages tomorrow of whatever comes to your mind. Don’t reread your sentences. Don’t edit anything. Don’t try to make it sound good (because no one is reading it). Don’t make sense of it in the process. Let your thoughts wander.
Just write.
