Following the Brush: Three Ways to Let Creativity Find You

 Creativity Is Always There

Last weekend, I was teaching a lesson on Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages from her classic book The Artist’s Way. I was at The Inn in Bath — Kelly Pallito’s beautiful bed & breakfast in Bath, Maine’s historic district — with eight remarkable women who had come together to learn how to teach The Guide for Real-Life Heroines.

And there I was, once again, preparing to advocate for what I affectionately call The Pages.

I began with my usual introduction:

“This is a tool I’ve used for many years to stir up my creativity. It works. You will be rewarded in every aspect of your life. But it does require discipline. You write three longhand pages of whatever is in your head, first thing in the morning. Your brain will want to plan. Your inner critic will say, ‘What if someone reads this?’ It will want to edit as you go. But you can’t let it. You simply keep moving your hand across the page and let whatever is there come out.”

I already wrote about Morning Pages in a blog post on August 23, 2022, so you can start there if you want to learn more. There’s even a video from my early days of recording myself, and I am trying very hard not to cringe about it.

Usually, when I introduce Morning Pages, I brace myself for the familiar chorus:

“Three pages?!”

“I don’t even write longhand anymore!”

“Three 8½-by-11 pages? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Does it have to be in the morning?”

“Does it have to be that many pages?”

“Why can’t I use my computer?”

And usually, I’m ready with my response, because I know what happens when we commit to this practice. I know how Morning Pages can clear away the mental detritus — the worries, complaints, loops, lists, doubts, and scattered fragments — and make room for the light to come through.

But this time, before I had to say another word, Mari spoke up.

“I've been doing morning pages for a couple of decades now and can't live without it. It's like dusting out the cobwebs of my brain. If I miss doing them for some reason, I notice a distinct difference in my day. I'm less grounded, less creative.” 

And there it was: someone else naming the magic.

We're Having a Moment

Have you noticed? Something is shifting. The people and practices that awaken our creativity are moving to the front.

Recently, Ellen Webster — writer of over 10,000 thank-you notes, guest on The Podcast for Real-Life Heroines, and first-prize winner of our Heroine’s Writing Contest — introduced me to Alyson Shelton and her project, Where I’m From. Alyson invites people to write from a prompt inspired by George Ella Lyon’s beloved poem of the same name.

I was immediately drawn in.

The prompt takes you back to childhood — to the details you didn’t know you still carried. I just finished searching for a childhood picture to send to Alyson at her request, and suddenly I am there again: in the backyard on Killian Avenue in Trumbull, Connecticut.

That is the power of a good prompt. It becomes a bridge to another part of the mind, or maybe another part of the soul. It opens a door that a direct command — “Write a poem” — often cannot.

Following The Brush

Then, during our class last weekend, another student, Michele Cheung, a college professor at the University of Southern Maine, introduced us to yet another writing doorway: zuihitsu, a literary form often translated as “following the brush.”

Zuihitsu is an old Japanese form of writing, dating back more than a thousand years. It allows the text to drift like a cloud — gathering impressions, fragments, memories, images, lists, and observations. Cheryl Moskowitz describes it beautifully in her piece on Follow the Brush, Making Zuihitsu Poetry and I was struck by how closely it echoes Julia Cameron’s invitation to keep the hand moving across the page and write down whatever comes to mind.

Morning Pages.
Where I’m From.
Follow the Brush.

Three Different Practices

Three different doorways. But all of them are asking us to trust what arises when we stop trying so hard to be “creative” and simply begin. Simply put pen to paper.

Maybe this form of writing is especially suited to our social-media, short-attention-span lives. Our minds are already full of fragments. When I write Morning Pages, I’m often amazed at the strange hopping of my own thoughts — from a worry, to a memory, to a grocery list, to a sudden insight, to something I didn’t even know I felt.

And yet, somehow, the very act of letting all those fragments land on the page steadies me. It clears the way. It helps me enter the day with more direction, more spaciousness, and more trust.

And Then There Was One More Unexpected Surprise

In 2007, I took a creative writing class with Michele Cheung. I hadn’t seen her in almost twenty years. Back then, my colleagues Amy Wood, Creighton Taylor, and I were working on a book proposal based on the work we were doing through our business, Ruby Slippers. We hired Michele to help us, and she did. We submitted the proposal to several agents, but then life happened. The three of us went our separate ways, and I never circled back to tell Michele how the story unfolded.

And then, nearly twenty years later, there she was — signing up for this course.

I was already delighted to see her. But the synchronicity became even more powerful when, during class, we came across an example in the manuscript for the exercise Exploring Your Options.

Explaining the exercise, I wrote:

For the option I chose, to pursue writing, my three small steps were:

1. Look for a writing class that interests you.
2. Sign up for the class.
3. Take the class.

And there it was.

That class had been Michele’s class.

I had taken the step. I had followed the thread. I had entered through one doorway, not knowing where it would lead. And now, twenty years later, Michele and I were sitting together again — this time learning how to teach these exercises to other women.

That Is The Deeper Story Beneath All Of This

Creativity is not something we have to chase down or force into being. It is not reserved for “real writers” or “artists” or people with uninterrupted mornings and perfect notebooks.

It is already here.

It lives in the fragments.
It lives in the childhood backyard.
It lives in the brush as it moves across the page.
It lives in the three small steps we take without knowing what they will someday mean.

Our job is to make an opening.

To pick up the pen.
To follow the brush.
To trust the prompt.
To let the hidden voice within us finally have its say.