Lifestyle Soup

I’m a perfectionist and I’ve found that my perfectionism tends to breed procrastination.

When writing a blog entry I’ve often found it excruciating because I felt like I was completely butchering it. I would finish writing a post and suddenly realize that I completely hated what I had just written. It only takes going through that process a few times before you start to lose confidence in your writing.

I recently read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and one of the main things she recommends is keeping a daily journal. She calls the journal “Morning Pages.” Every morning you are supposed to brain dump three pages worth of content into your journal. This includes every thought that comes to mind including hopes, dreams, worries, the fact you need to take the clothes to the dry cleaners, etc. If you run dry on ideas to write about, you are supposed to write about the fact you can’t think of anything else to say. The key is to do three pages of writing. You’re also supposed to hide the journal and not show anybody, your significant other included.

Writing daily morning pages accomplished two things for me. First, it allowed me to express some feelings I really haven’t dealt with, which was great. Second, it actually made me realize what it feels like to write with no holds barred. It felt freeing to be able to just vomit my thoughts onto a page and not worry about looking like a complete fool when somebody else were to read it.

What does this have to do with finding your blogging voice? Well, I have found that when writing my blog entries if I can recapture that “free” feeling I have when I write in my morning pages, everything comes out much easier and more clearly. I’m sure we all have our own issues that hold us back from being truly comfortable with our writing, which in turn makes for impaired writing ability.

Might I suggest that if you are having problems getting comfortable blogging and don’t feel that you are expressing your ideas the way you want to, consider trying out morning pages.

Image by Barnaby.