Creative Writing

Creativity not only has the power to generate art, music and literature that can change the world, but did you know it also has the ability to make a difference to positively affect your wellbeing?

We wanted to promote some creative exercises or ideas that may help you engage with mindfulness!

• ‘Morning Pages’: ‘Morning pages’ is an exercise formalised by writer Julia Cameron in her 1992 book The Artist’s Way. It’s been promoted by many well-known artists, leaders and businesspeople. As soon as you’ve woken up, you should write three sides of A4 paper, non-stop on whatever you’re thinking about, until the pages are filled. You don’t have to worry about spelling or grammar as it won’t be read by anyone else and you shouldn’t go back and edit! The exercise ends as soon as you finish the end of your third side of A4. These three sides are the ‘Morning Pages’ and aim to help clear your mind and check-in with how you’re feeling at the start of a day. Some people read back on these pages after they’ve finished and some throw them away immediately – what you do with them after is up to you!
• Freewriting: Similar to ‘Morning Pages’, this involves writing non-stop for a set amount of time. You should pick a piece of music and write continuously for the duration of the song. The starting point can be anything you’d like – but shouldn’t be decided before you start writing. Again, the aim here isn’t to write a perfect piece of literature, but to help get out all the stuff stuck in your brain. The vast majority of the stuff you write will make no sense; but you might find a few nuggets or ideas that you might not have thought of otherwise. Once the song has finished, you can either repeat the exercise with another song – or you can pick out a phrase from your first entry and use that as the starting point for the next one. This aims to help free up your creativity, flushing out any of the everyday thoughts that might block our brains up. Tiny Writing Find an object that’s small – smaller than a tennis ball. Set a timer for five minutes and write down every single observation you can about this tiny item. This list can include literal description “It’s pink” “It’s a cube” but after a minute these may become more abstract or specific. This exercise helps to concentrate the mind, thinking about smaller details you might not otherwise see day-to-day.

All of these exercises aim to focus the mind and cut out every day thoughts that might make creativity harder to access. The most important thing is to do these in the spirit of playfulness, not perfection. Since nobody’s (probably) going to read these, why not see where your creativity takes you?