Practicing morning pages cut my copywriting time in half and let me farm the very best stories.
10 out of 10! Would recommend for content creation, learning storytelling, and sourcing humor for your brand.
It’s a practice I learned about from Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way.
Like a 10-min self-audit each morning.
You write every thought that comes to your head and without pausing for 3 whole pages. It’s very stream-of-consciousness.
Even if your only thought is, “I don’t know what to write” – you write it. I promise more substantial thoughts will eventually come and it’ll read less like “dear diary…”
I’m taking a lil break from Morning Pages right now, since I pushed a human being out of my hoo-ha about 4 weeks ago.
I barely get a shower in, so brain dumping across three pages in a journal isn’t on the agenda.
But once the baby sleeps a tad more, it’ll be one of my first returning tasks. Self-reflective, woo-woo reasons aside – here are 3 reasons I recommend morning pages for anyone writing their own copy:
1. You get cozy with your Brand Voice.
Supposedly, one of the rules is to not lift your pen from the paper during your morning pages. It keeps you actively writing, and this stream-of-consciousness gets your real personality on paper.
Phrases you regularly use show up.
How you do or don’t curse shows up.
Your humor type shows up.
When you’re not allowed to hold back, everything about you surfaces (don’t be scared!) and you can start picking up on some patterns.
If you’re unclear on your Brand Voice and/or don’t have this documented yet – I challenge you to 2 weeks of morning pages.
Then re-read them to pick up on said-patterns. Keep an eye out for recurring themes and topics, which you can use for naming your offers or simply ideating email content.
2. You farm really good stories.
When you write morning pages, you’ll start to retell parts of your day and walk back through different experiences.
Morning pages let’s you process events and recount feelings or thoughts. Naturally, your pages will quickly fill with STORIES.
Lucky for you, storytelling is not only super popular right now – but a pretty effective form of communication.
Using stories to educate your audience and engage readers into a sale is a strategy as old as time.
Now, I don’t recommend directly repurposing morning pages into content (unless you’re feelin’ SOME sorta wild), but you can source them for stories.
Like I mentioned in the point before, you’ll notice recurring themes and threads between your day-to-day life, waiting for you to mine.
It’s easy to know your CTA right-off-the-bat, but tying it to a story is a big boy struggle for lots of folks. Instead of fighting the beast, periodically flip through your morning pages for some stories.
One of my biggest storytelling tips: write everything like it’s juicy gossip.
I teach this in my humor copywriting program, Stand Up Copy.
I like to thumb through my writing and highlight snippets of items I can use, then I lean into the details and even exaggeration to bring my point home.
3. You become more prolific.
I’m sure we could both list out multiple reasons why copywriting is tough, but one is simply getting started.
Facing the document. The screen. The paper.
It gets easier the more reps you put in, and morning pages are low lift. (No pun intended)
Spending 10-15 minutes a day, cranking out your thoughts onto a few sheets of paper makes you familiar with transferring words from head to screen.
Although folks might argue it only applies to creative writing, this daily practice has helped my own copywriting!
I see it as a way to grow your emotional intelligence, understanding of others, empathy, and more. Those skills and awareness directly tie in with sales copy.
Cameron says that when folks ask her WHY morning pages, she jokes, “To get to the other side.”
In many ways, regularly writing without a “productive” purpose takes the pressure off to get to the other side of mental blocks, fear, negativity, and more.
Morning pages bring clarity, keep us self-aware, and in-check with how our inner creative.
Every business owner is their own brand and over time, we’ve all become content creators. Creatives. Morning pages teach your left brain to chill the hell out so your creative brain can PLAY.
