I was inspired by reading Christian's post on meditation to share a bit of my practice with you. I got this from Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way. You'll have to ask her where she got it from :) She calls it "The Daily Pages" and Ill let you have a look at how she presents it, but I wanted to share my experience of it and how and why I think it helps me.

This is the exercise: every morning, take three blank sheets of A4 and start writing on one of them, down the page until all three are full. Then put them away (don't read over them or show them to someone else) and then get on with your day. You can write anything you like - it's your writing, but it's important not to dwell on what your writing as much as recognising that that is what you are doing.

That's it.

It's a form of meditation and like the empty-mind meditation Christian talks about, you need to try it out and see where it takes you rather than trying to analyse what it should do for you.

Here are some of the things it does for me - when I do it :)

It helps to start the day on the right note, practicing and celebrating your creativity and reminding you of what's really important in your life. I think it's important to do it before anything else at all except addressing any immediate and urgent calls of nature. And if what you end up writing about is how awful your current life situation seems, then it's probably a good way of getting it out of your system before launching yourself into that current life situation.

It's a great practice in starting afresh. You literally have a blank sheet of paper in front of you and if nothing else it's a useful exercise in just putting pen to paper, making marks that represent your thoughts and getting over the often difficult question of where to start. It reminds me to just start, no matter what. And this translates into other creative activities - whether it's drawing, taking photographs, strumming my ukulele or getting up on the dancefloor - we all have to start somewhere.

You might be tempted to type, rather than write longhand. This can be of some use as an exercise and it helps with the blank sheet of paper problem, but I find it much more valuable to sit down with pen and paper. It does a few things for me. It brings me closer to the act of creating. It really is me, making something by directing my hand to make complex shapes - by contrast, typing is much more mechanical, requires a different bit of the brain. It also reduces the temptation to edit as I go. A word processor is for processing words, not necessarily for writing. I find it more useful to just write (although I do have false starts and crossings out) If I'm editing then I'm worrying more about how it will be read than what it is I want to say. This is a general rule for me. If I can draft longhand, I do. I also think it helps me get more in touch with the child in me, the creative bit who didn't have a keyboard or anyone watching, who just put crayon on the paper and said what was in his head.

So no guarantees - it may not be for you, but it's an interesting exercise to try even for a few days, just to see what it does for your writing and creativity generally.