I have been writing a lot of words in the past week although they are mostly not ready for prime time. I discovered Jeff Warren‘s meditation designed to help with creative block and have been using it for the past few mornings. Warren’s approach is similar to Julia Cameron’s morning pages applied to whatever you create: just write or draw or sing or sculpt without thinking or judging. Warren even suggests that it should be terrible. Making bad art is something Austin Kleon has written about as well.

Warren uses a timer–I’ve been doing 20 minutes–and rather than writing long hand the way I have for decades of morning pages, I am using my Freewrite keyboard. I want to start producing publishable text and the morning pages don’t lend themselves to formal writing. For now, the goal is getting the habit in place.

I haven’t given up the long hand morning pages, however, and am experimenting with approaching them as letters to an old friend. Still mostly stream of consciousness but with a bit of organization and thoughtfulness.

Letter writing has been on my mind, perhaps as part of a general nostalgia I’ve been feeling as I continue my transition into semi-retirement. In the olden days, I loved nothing better than spending an afternoon writing long letters to friends and family, settled into a comfortable chair with favorite pens and paper, a beverage alongside, maybe some music playing. I had a few good correspondents over the years, including the friend I visited in Pennsylvania this summer, but time and life and technology eventually saw our letters dwindle to a few lines on birthday and holiday cards, and now have largely been replaced by email, text messages and social media messages.

I am going to make time this week to write a newsy letter to my old friend. I did send a short thank you note, one of those cards with a few scribbled lines, when I returned home, but life has happened since we sat beside her pool. I will tell her about all the tomato sauce I am making from my San Marzano tomatoes, the cool, rainy weather that seems to herald fall’s arrival, what I am reading and watching, plans for the fall. It will be, at least for a little while, as though we are together again.