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moved to constructive action. The pages lead us out of despair and into undreamed-of solutions.
    The first time I did morning pages, I was living in Taos, New Mexico. I had gone there to sort myself out—into what, I didn’t know. For the third time in a row, I’d had a film scuttled due to studio politics. Such disasters are routine to screenwriters, but to me they felt like miscarriages. Cumulatively, they were disastrous. I wanted to give the movies up. Movies had broken my heart. I didn’t want any more brainchildren to meet untimely deaths. I’d gone to New Mexico to mend my heart and see what else, if anything, I might want to do.
    Living in a small adobe house that looked north to Taos Mountain, I began a practice of writing morning pages. Nobody told me to do them. I had never heard of anybody doing them. I just got the insistent, inner sense that I should do them and so I did. I sat at a wooden table looking north to Taos Mountain and I wrote.
    The morning pages were my pastime, something to do instead of staring at the mountain all the time. The mountain, a humpbacked marvel different in every weather, raised more questions than I did. Wrapped in clouds one day, dark and wet the next, that mountain dominated my view and my morning pages as well. What did it—or anything—mean? I asked page after page, morning after morning. No answer.
    And then, one wet morning, a character named Johnny came strolling into my pages. Without planning to, I was writing a novel. The morning pages had shown me a way.
    Anyone who faithfully writes morning pages will be led to a connection with a source of wisdom within. When I am stuck with a painful situation or problem that I don’t think I know how to handle, I will go to the pages and ask for guidance. To do this, I write “LJ” as a shorthand for me, “Little Julie,” and then I ask my question.
 
Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.
    ROBBIE GASS
     
 
It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.
    SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
     
     
    LJ: What should I tell them about this inner wisdom? (Then I listen for the reply and write that down, too.)
    ANSWER: You should tell them everyone has a direct dial to God. No one needs to go through an operator. Tell them to try this technique with a problem of their own. They will.
    Sometimes, as above, the answer may seem flippant or too simple. I have come to believe that seem is the operative word. Very often, when I act on the advice I have been given, it is exactly right—far more right than something more complicated would have been. And so, for the record, I want to say: pages are my way of meditating; I do them because they work.
    A final assurance: the morning pages will work for painters, for sculptors, for poets, for actors, for lawyers, for housewives—for anyone who wants to try anything creative. Don’t think they are a tool for writers only. Hooey. These pages are not intended for writers only. Lawyers who use them swear they make them more effective in court. Dancers claim their balance improves—and not just emotionally. If anything, writers, who have a regrettable desire to write morning pages instead of just do them, may have the hardest time seeing their impact. What they’re likely to see is that their other writing seems to suddenly be far more free and expansive and somehow easy to do. In short, no matter what your reservation or your occupation, morning pages will function for you.
    Timothy, a buttoned-down, buttoned-lip curmudgeon millionaire, began writing morning pages with a skeptic’s scorn. He didn’t want to do them without some proof that they would work. The damn pages had no label, no Dun and Brad-street rating. They just sounded silly, and Timothy hated silly.
    Timothy was, in street parlance, a serious player. His poker face was so straight it looked more like a fireplace