Master writers, poets and therapeutic writers use stream of consciousness writing to document and capture creative thoughts that bubble up from their subconscious. Here are three quotes from The Writer’s Handbook, edited by Howard Junker, that explain how writing in the morning helps them start the day. If you want to see the raw notes of professional writers at the creative stage give the book a read.

A Diary of the Coming Day

The first writing of the morning: I imagine the day I want to live. I’m hoping I can make real the day I’ve written.

Drawing Dreams

I have learned that dreams are more accurately set down in drawings (with color pens if dreaming in color) than in words. I divide the page into three sections because dreams are often in three acts, and do have beginning-middle-end. You can get at a dream by drawing a triptych. When you put dreams into words, you bring them into the reasoning logical world. I used to write dreams; now I only draw them.

Maxine Hong Kingston is an author and Professor Emerita at the University of California.  For 15 years she led writing-and-meditation workshops for Veterans and their families and is known for her healing words.    She won the Northern California Book Award, 2007 for Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, was the winner of the Best Spiritual Books Award, 2003 for The Fifth Book of Peace and received the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1981 for China Men.  President Bill Clinton presented her with a National Humanities Medal in 1997.

Creative Journaling

I have no idea of the usefulness of these scribbling to others. I know journal writing works for me in the sense that on a daily basis I am taking what happens in my head, running it down through my heart, then up through my shoulder, down my arm, and into my fingers that hold the pen. I like the physicality of writing by hand, the act of translating what I’m feeling and thinking into words on a page. Writing daily, or almost daily, no matter what comes out, makes me feel whole, purposeful, balanced, and scrubbed clean. There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this is one thing I’ve found to be true; Writing begets writing.

Dorianne Laux is an American poet and teacher. She wrote five books of poems and teaches at North Carolina State University MFA Program, Pacific University‘s Low residency MFA Program, Esalen Institute and Truro Center for the Arts. Her poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Romanian, Dutch, Afrikaans and Brazilian Portuguese. She’s the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.