Daily Pages

I may have told this story in this spot before, but years ago I worked with this book called "The Artist's Way", which included fun exercises meant to unlock the creativity most of us adults don't access regularly.

The main ongoing exercise done throughout the whole process of the book was writing three pages a day. Just writing whatever you want, getting three pages on paper, every damn day. An interesting process! Sometimes it was easy to fill the pages and sometimes it was incredibly difficult. Once the chatter of the mind was emptied on the page for a couple days, and the hopes, fears and plans were written down once or twice, and some memories explored, or "journal" type entries about the day's events…well, after a while, I'd hit a wall.

"What do I write about now?"

There were some interesting effects that came from this exercise; they definitely had an impact on me. After a week or ten days, I began having extremely vivid dreams. They were pretty scary, actually - being trapped in a crowd of decaying corpses, stuff like that. But far more vivid than my dreams usually are.

The other was that I became much more emotional than usual. A couple times it came out in negative ways. Whereas I would normally keep my anger or annoyance to myself, in my tightly wound and rigidly controlled way, I found myself expressing those emotions to my friends when they ticked me off.

It was very much NOT what I was used to and it kind of freaked me out, so I stopped doing the pages.

Over the years, I've tried doing it here and there when I remember it, but have never kept it going long enough to notice any real effects like I did back in the day.

But I like the idea of this. And the memory of this just came back to me today. I'm thinking I'll try it again and see what kind of thoughts, ideas and emotions it churns up. It's nice to stir the pot, mentally, once in awhile!

Have you ever heard of this? Keep a journal or diary? Or does your webcomic function that way for you?

Happy Thursday, y'all!

-Banes