Morning Pages.  Three pages of longhand writing in the morning.  Not meant to be written, in the sense that they’re a exercise in getting the brain onto the page and giving voice to what the Chinese call monkey mind – that bouncing, scattershot squirrel of thoughts that natters on throughout the day behind the scenes.

I’ve been doing Morning Pages since 1995 and they’ve quite literally changed my life.  It’s to the point, now, where I don’t even argue their effectiveness, because I know they’re effective – I just assign them, teach them, preach them, do them.

They’re most effective when we do them, I’ve learned.

When I came up with the theme for Mondays as “Monday Morning Pages,” I did it more for the sense of transliteration than anything else.  But as I type, I find it fitting that Mondays would be this sort of post – a Zen wander through my mind and, in the case of today, my camera.

The morning was gorgeous.  The light had a golden quality with the oncoming sun that made the snow sparkle.  It was really cold, only about 8F, but lovely.

My lunch serves as a rest for my craft bag, which right now carries the Emerald Keep Scarf and my story binder, which has two in-process novels in it, Sealed by Duty and Sapphire Dream.  It’s got the story grid, setting triangle, and GMC for all of the characters.  I’ll expand on what those things are in another post, but for now, I’m just sharing what’s in my bag.  The cup is my cold coffee for the morning.  A necessity.  I didn’t have time to make hot coffee, so this is some cold stuff that I made yesterday.  It’s caffeinated, that’s all I care about before I’m all the way awake.

There’s no school today, since it’s President’s Day.  But the school had a light on, making me wonder who went to school today?  A hardworking teacher?  A lonely janitor?  A homeless person sneaking in out of the cold?  An alien, hoping to take over the building as the new command center of an invading force?

Hey, man.  It’s Monday, and this is the Morning Pages.

You have been warned.  🙂