inspiration

How Morning Pages Can Improve Your Writing

/ Stuart Danker / 106 Comments

Morning Pages Writing - Lilartsy

So you’ve probably heard of morning pages.

I mean, you can’t mention books like On Writing, Bird By Bird, and The War Of Art without including The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. And in it lies one of the most helpful ways to unlock your creativity, and that’s the morning pages.

In a nutshell, this the practice of filling up three A4 pages (Cameron uses letter-sized, but let’s keep things simple) longhand before starting your day.

I’d started morning pages a few years back and I loved it. But that practice slowly evolved into normal journalling, something I thought would function the same.

Only after picking it up again did I realise how wrong I was. Morning pages wasn’t something I could simply replace with journalling, no matter how long my entries were. The entire mindset going into it was different.

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Improve Your Blog Posts And Grow Your Audience In 7 Simple Steps

/ Stuart Danker / 125 Comments

Fans in a concert with someone making the heart sign. Photo by

We need to talk. You, yes you, the typical blogger. No, not you regular readers. You guys are cool, because I check your blogs every time you comment. No, this is for those who’ve found this blog through the Reader. I’m writing this for you.

You need to stop publishing every brain fart of yours on WordPress. I mean it. I say this because I want you to flourish. And if WordPress flourishes, then we all do too, right?

But back to the subject at hand. You can’t half-ass your posts and expect your readers to care. So let’s go back to exploring the basics.

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Interesting Lessons From Working Out For 60 Days Straight

/ Stuart Danker / 50 Comments

A man doing reverse dips on a bar. Photo by Kate Trysh

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you’ll probably have noticed me spamming your feed with my daily workouts.

As of today, I’ve just passed my 60-day streak, and I did manage to learn some interesting things about myself along the way.

And you know the first thing I’ve realised? It’s that exercising is not about getting washboard abs or increasing your bench record. Instead, it does more for your mental and spiritual growth.

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Why Every Writer Needs To Know About Commonplace Books

/ Stuart Danker / 64 Comments
A man with a cap writing in a notebook

Photo: Brad Neathery

You know how you wake up in the morning and think ‘Whoa, that was a weird dream’, and you’re pretty sure you’ll remember it for later, but before you’re done making coffee, all that remains are the vague leftover feelings?

That’s memory for you. Here’s another example. Try recalling what you had for dinner last week. Doesn’t really ring a bell, am I right? What about last month? Last year?

The reason why I bring this up is exactly because of last week’s dinner. There I was, stuffing my face with chicken and rice, and this thought popped up in my head.

What if I wrote a blog post about remembering every dinner I ever had?

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Having Trouble Getting Things Done? Try Out This Neat Little Trick.

/ Stuart Danker / 67 Comments
A woman in glasses lying down on her couch in a blanket

Photo: Adrian Swancar

The best parts of being a writer is having an excuse to craft the most outlandish metaphors. I could liken rock climbing to drawing, for instance, because it’s all about learning the little techniques that’ll make up the larger picture (heh) that is your art.

Or I could link running and writing, because you’ll never see your improvement in your day-to-day, but do it long enough and you’ll be able to see how far (heh heh) you’ve progressed.

Having said that, boy do I have the metaphor for today’s topic.

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