When I was a kid, I always saved the best part of a meal until last.
This was sometimes a risky proposition: Mum cooked a lovely roast lunch, but her potatoes (my favourite) were variable. There was always the danger of slogging through the boiled vegetables, enjoying the tender lamb, then finally sliding a hopeful knife into the roast potatoes only to find that rather than crispy outside and melting inside, they were rubbery. But if she’d hit it right… mmmm, those potatoes were simply gorgeous.
Morning pages – dumping the rubbish
And so it’s proving with the morning pages I’m writing for Blisschick’s 100-day challenge. First thing every morning, I churn out three hand-written stream-of-consciousness pages. Usually, the first two and a half sides are the most awful crap, full of self-centred moaning and groaning. That’s the point of the pages, of course: you dump all that stuff out of your head to leave space for creative truth. (I mean creative truth in the fullest sense of how we live our lives, not only in the sense of artistic expression.)
Insights
And then often, in that last half page, some real insights start to emerge, even if it’s right in the very last line. Sometimes the last few lines are still soggy and disappointing. But sometimes they are deliciously helpful and worth waiting for.
Now I’m sorry if I’ve built up your expectations, but sadly I don’t yet have the meaning of life all nicely packaged up and ready to share!
Taking a break
What I have realised is this: those last lines have become insistent that I need to go deeper into some reflections without an audience.
And the ‘audience’ means you, dear reader, because that stream-of-consciousness has made me understand I am in some strange way adapting my thoughts and experiences to what I write in this blog. It’s turning into the wrong way about, it’s making me less honest in both directions. I can’t find the words to explain why.
So I’m taking a couple of weeks’ break from writing here to do some more navel-gazing.
I’ll be around online and look forward to reading my favourite blogs. I’ll also be posting on my other blog, Pilgrim’s Moon.
I’ll be back here in early June. See you then.
Image by D’Arcy Norman
Elsewhere:
I mostly choose images for my posts from the Creative Commons stock at Flickr. It happens that the story behind the image above is really interesting. Go check it out at the photographer’s Flickr page. It centres around a book called Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
And as an adult, I’ve actually cracked the skill of perfect roast potatoes every time. I use the Delia Smith method explained here. It really works!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Tess, OF COURSE you will be missed — if even just for two weeks — but I am glad the morning pages seem to be doing what needs to be done.
And thank you for the kind comment regarding my writing as of recently.
Enjoy your navel-gazing.
I too find that I need to write apart from the blog, a very different sort of writing, as you explain so well.
Have fun diving deep.
Looking forward to your return.
oh friend, you have tapped into some of my own dilemma! it’s reminiscent of those surreal moments when you are living them and blogging/writing them all at the same time?!??! i was crafting words in my dream last night. living an experience, while attempting to put words to it all at the same time. it was very odd to watch. your post is leading me toward some of my own navel-gazing. glad the pages are working. hope you can let go of the “expectations” for those last few line
xoxooxo
Good luck with the writing challenge. Sounds like a fruitful undertaking!
Thank you all for this encouragement.
Lucy, I, too have had these dreams although lately more to do with visual journalling than blog posts. And a knowing comment on the “expectations”.
The last couple of days, there’s just been a whole “whoosh” of impassioned writing which just wrote itself for the three pages. Well in fact this morning for just two pages – I gave myself the freedom to decide I was done at that point.