Here we are again, friends, our Thursday date. How are things where you are? This week I’ve been working from the terrace of an apartment in Nice. I forget how the sun feels here, so intense and direct. From my fifth-floor perch I’ve been watching a group of seagulls watch me back from theirs, on the roof across the way. There’s a fuzzy little chick who nestles itself into the curved gap between two terracotta tiles, the only charming seagull I’ve ever encountered. And speaking of perches, lockdown officially lifted yesterday in France, and the entire nation assumed theirs, reclaiming the French natural habitat that is the sidewalk terrasse. Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Thanks for joining me here, I’ll raise an Aperol Spritz in your honor!
The Rolling Stones at Villa Nellcôte in Villefranche-sur-Mer, recording Exile on Main Street, 1971.
A few weeks ago when I'd felt a bit mentally depleted after writing two huge, dense essays right in a row, I sat down on the Thursday morning with nothing much to say and managed to just wing my way through sending out that week's newsletter. Remember? Probably you do, because it was only like three weeks ago, and I've been on a real bender of writing huge, dense essays lately. Afterwards, I was honestly quite impressed with myself and thought, 'Hey! Maybe you should just wing it every week, it actually kind of works!’ But noooooo. I have things to say. Specific things that I roll around in my head for days, if not weeks at a time, until they gather up enough substance to become a fully-formed idea.
Whatever it may look like from the outside – city and job-hopping, etc – there's very little I do off-the-cuff. I might not be great at longterm planning and visioning, but on a day-to-day basis, I crave routine. Without a kind of schedule to reign me in, I feel unsteady and unfocused. Saturdays completely do my head in; without fail every week, I am overwhelmed by the expansiveness of a wide-open day and become paralyzed. With the looming potential to do anything, I end up doing nothing.
In writing, there are pantsers (as in, by-the-seat-of-one's-pants) and there are plotters. Somehow I manage to be both and neither at once. I don't usually know where I'll end up when I'm starting out, though I tend to have an idea of the places I want to explore, which requires at least some upfront work. Once the broad territories are defined, it's a vertical drop straight into the mind-cave, and I'm just feeling my way around with only a pinpoint of light from above to guide me. This is not, objectively, a great feeling until it is, if and when you manage to find some brilliant insight, like a geode sparkling amongst all the batshit.
Sometimes it's just the batshit down there, though.
I've often kept a journal, but recently I started writing 'morning pages.' Maybe you've heard of morning pages, because the people who do them tend to like to tell you all about how it's changed their life, and how it can change yours, too. Sort of like vegans. And actually, they're kind of right. (Also the vegans.) If you haven't heard of morning pages, well, basically it does what it says on the tin. In the morning, you write pages. It's pretty simple. The idea comes from writer and teacher Julia Cameron, who – fun fact! – was married to Martin Scorsese for a few years in the mid-seventies, and therefore deeply entrenched in the swinging Hollywood creative class. The morning pages ritual was instrumental in her recovery from alcoholism, a journey she describes in The Artist's Way, her text on craft and creativity that has become canon for a generation of writers. (I admit that I haven't read it yet, which even I find surprising, but I'll get around to it.)
There are a few details to how it works, but it's by no means dogmatic. You write every morning, as close as possible to waking up. You write three pages – not full ones – just front-back-front, and that's it. Yes, on paper; yes, hand-written. But other than that, only the ritual should be treated preciously. No fancy pens, no leather-bound journals, no thesaurus by your side. You are not writing for posterity, you're cleaning out the attic and piling the bags at the curb.
At first I resisted the messiness of it. My handwriting was scrawling, the page was littered with hideous cross-outs, my brain was foggy, and a lot of the time I was just writing about having nothing to write about. But it turns out, that's the point. Once I let go of my inclination to craft every sentence, to polish every rough thought, my three pages would practically fill themselves and I'd feel like I was just getting started. But the real magic doesn't happen in the activity itself; rather it's afterwards, when you next find yourself staring down a blank page, anxiety-inducing as a Saturday without plans.
Giving myself the space every day to just let loose a meandering stream of consciousness has not only brought greater clarity to my more deliberate thinking, but it's helped me get better at winging it. Like right now. Totally pantsed this whole thing. I had no idea what I was going to write about today. I did my morning pages earlier, wringing out some crabbiness about my having my cozy little life routine disrupted because – sigh – I'm down here in Nice, spending a week on the Côte d'Azur. But when I opened a new page to compose this letter, that morning fog had burned off, and I started writing under a clear blue sky.
Were you expecting something else?
Never not worth a listen.