The Non-Negotiable Practice That Builds My Creative Stamina and Secures Major Career Wins
How my daily three-page Morning Pages ritual clears mental clutter, sharpens my creative stamina, and has powered major career wins.
Managing Your Creative Energy Is Just As Important As Time Management
I spotted a post on Threads that said, “So much of making art is managing your energy,” and I couldn’t agree more. As creatives, seductive ideas may come and go, but it takes real intention, energy, and stamina to imagine a thing and even more to see it through to completion.
My clients and creative peers may know me for creating compelling brand stories, but what they rarely see is this daily practice that works like my creative palette‑cleanser and catalyst for some of my most pivotal career wins.
One key way I keep my own creative batteries charged is through the Morning Pages practice. It’s a handwritten, no‑filter, stream of consciousness across 3 hand-written pages I scribble down in my journal first thing in the morning.
There’s no editing, no polishing and no pressure to be witty or profound. What’s on the page doesn’t even have to make sense. It’s really about clearing my mental cache so that I can access higher levels of creativity.
Inspired by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and guarded like my best-kept creative secret ever since, Morning Pages are my pre-flight check. They sweep yesterday’s residue off my mental runway so I can go full throttle on the ideas I want to bring to life.
Because here’s what two decades of managing various creative projects and under tight deadlines have shown me: If my head’s a junk drawer, the draft can only come out cluttered, too. I don’t know about you, but the people who trust us creatives to bring their visions to life aren’t paying for clutter. They expect their creative partner to arrive idea-rich and execution-ready from the jump.
If you’re anything like me, sometimes my mental browser gets bogged down. On occasion, it could feel like my brain is running on 27 open tabs on a slow Wi‑Fi day. But Morning Pages makes sure my mental cache stays tidy as I pen one messy, meandering entry at a time.
Clear the noise, and suddenly that outline you’ve been avoiding, that word count you’ve been struggling to meet, that pitch deck you need to overhaul, or that keynote you need to prepare starts to line up. Bang out three pages before you start responding and reacting to everyone else’s ideas and requests, and watch the rest of your day click into place.
I know committing to three handwritten pages can feel like stuffing one more task onto an already overloaded plate. But hear me out. In the three years I’ve kept up my Morning Pages, I can trace every standout moment since—from national broadcast invites, to an award-winning Ford campaign, to a sold-out watch party that infused nearly $1,000 into a local food truck—straight back to this practice.
How An NPR Appearance Turned Into a White House Advisory Committee Invite
Don’t think of Morning Pages as a writers-only ritual. In fact, they’re training for anyone who relies on their voice: speakers, trainers, facilitators, storytellers, and even podcast hosts.
People often comment on how easily I put complex ideas into words. Toastmasters helps, but the real edge comes from handwriting three uncensored pages every morning. So by the time I open my mouth, the thoughts have already formed full paragraphs on paper.
That discipline paid off when NPR’s 1A was assembling a panel on the growing wave of Americans moving overseas and asked me to join as a guest expert. The producer gave me a recording time and little else. That also meant no questions in advance
For months I’d been unpacking “America’s Next Great Migration” in my private writings and via insights from Black Expat Stories guests. So when it was time to go live on the radio, I simply pulled those threads together. It turned into a ‘lean-in’ conversation for 1A’s four-million-plus audience, partly because my thoughts were hatched from the pages I filled long before the opportunity to be featured on NPR appeared.
The ripple effect was immediate. A fellow panelist—a Harvard-trained migration scholar—said my perspective filled gaps in her research and linked me to a colleague in Paris who was forming an informal advisory committee for the White House to represent Americans overseas. A few emails later I was one of ten Americans, scattered across the globe, briefing the Biden-Harris administration on how U.S. policies really land abroad, from double taxation to healthcare hurdles.
That same daily practice keeps me podcast-ready, whether I’m hosting Black Expat Stories or sitting in someone else’s guest chair. Morning Pages make sure I step into any mic-on moment with fresh questions, astute responses, clear context, and a steady read on the real-time issues shaping this modern migration movement.
So if you’re looking for a voice that shows up prepared and perspective-rich, visit my Speaking page to learn more about how you can book me.
This Practice Helps Me Stay Creatively Nimble
Morning Pages are how I stay quick on my creative feet, which helps when the big opportunities offer only a brief heads-up.
Case in point: A director friend of mine messaged me with an opportunity to work on a commercial. The production company she’d teamed up with needed a compelling treatment, which is a brief deck that lays out the concept, story beats, and visual tone before cameras roll for a 30-second spot on the 2025 Ford Explorer.
I jumped at the chance to shape creative for America’s best-selling SUV—fitting, since an Explorer was also the first set of wheels I ever owned—but the clock was already ticking.
It was Monday, July 1st, and they needed the treatment on their desk by the first business day after the holiday, which would be Monday, July 8th. With the Fourth landing on a Thursday, that left just four working days (and a long-weekend lull) to deliver.
At the same time, a literal hurricane was brewing. As it inched toward the Riviera Maya, no one could say whether it would fizzle out or knock out the power for days. The pressure mounted. I had a holiday crunch on one side and the reality of hurricane season on the other.
Plus, this was a high-visibility spot for a major brand, and I was the one responsible for mapping the entire narrative arc, and we only had thirty seconds to do it, which meant the director had zero frames to waste.
Had I not been priming my creativity every morning, I might have buckled. Because my Morning Pages practice keeps my thinking loose and my imagination warmed up, I was able to jump in, translate the client’s brief into a clear storyline, and submit to the production team a treatment that hit every emotional beat they wanted to pitch to Ford - on deadline. Thankfully, the power and wifi held up and the storm didn’t cause major damage to this area.
With production greenlit and the spot shot, it aired coast-to-coast, and a year later won a Silver Telly Award in the Automotive category.
Watch the commercial
This practice is a huge reason why I’m able to stay calm and focused when the creative stakes are high.
Need an award-winning storyteller to turn a raw brief into a pitch-ready treatment or deck—whether it’s for a commercial, branded film, or bigger campaign concept? Visit my Pitch & Production Support page and let’s get your idea green-light ready.
Morning Pages Helps Me Turn Ideas Into Real-World Impact
In addition to keeping me nimble, Morning Pages challenge my own assumptions about what I can pull off. They nudge me right up to my creative edges, then call my bluff.
Case in point: for a year, I’d been sitting on raw footage for a Black Expat Stories episode. It was solid stuff, I’d just been procrastinating and letting my perfectionism win. But then, word reached me that the Black-woman-owned food truck we’d profiled was barely making it through low season.
Mid-scribble shortly after, the plan wrote itself: finish the episode, screen it live, and pass every ticket dollar back to the truck. I read it back, felt that spark, and knew putting this idea to action wasn’t optional.
Watch Black Expat Stories S1E9
Because the outline already lived on paper, the follow-through was just logistics. Three weeks. Under $100. A tiny planning crew. We locked a venue, tapped local businesses for raffle gifts, pushed the promo, and packed the room. By last call we’d routed almost $1,000 to the truck and captured crowd reactions strong enough for a festival sizzle reel.
Morning Pages sparked the idea and handed me the map.
If you want to see a recap of that beautiful night, you can watch it below:
The Black Expat Stories Watch Party Recap
Morning Pages keep me open to lightning-bolt ideas, then make sure I have the clarity to land them.
Do you need a story architect who can turn a sunrise notion into real-world impact? Check out my Creative Direction & Story Development page and let’s build something that moves people and the needle for you.
Why This Matters for You
Creative resistance rarely hides in the work itself. It lurks in the mental traffic that blocks the on-ramp. Three uncensored pages each morning act like debt relief for the imagination. They unblock energy, surface buried insights, and spare you from stepping into high-stakes rooms with half-baked takes. If you desire clearer copy, steadier nerves, wider creative impact, I believe it all starts with a pen and paper that won’t judge you.
A Challenge: The 21-Day Creative Jump-Start
Studies suggest it takes about 21 days to form a habit, and—shout-out to fellow Denison alum James Clear—our outcomes are lagging indicators of our habits. In other words: if you want to know where your creative life is headed, look at what you do daily.
So here’s the invitation: commit to Morning Pages for the next 21 days. You don’t need 21 brand-new prompts; you need reps. Rotate the seven prompts below three times. They’re short enough to finish, long enough to reveal whether Morning Pages deserve a permanent slot in your creative arsenal.
Identify the creative bottleneck throttling your flow.
List three lies your inner critic repeats—then refute them.
Write a love letter to a discarded idea.
Catalog ten micro-risks you can take this week.
Sketch your project if failure were impossible.
Draft tomorrow’s to-create list (not a to-do list).
Journal the headline of your dream review or testimonial.
Loop back to prompt 1 on Day 8 and Day 15. By Day 21 you’ll have filled 63 pages, closed countless mental tabs, and gathered enough data to decide if this practice sticks.
The Final Word
Writing has been my bread-and-butter for two decades, so I literally can’t afford “writer’s block.” If, like me, you eat what you kill, your craft has to stay razor-sharp or dinner doesn’t hit the table. Morning Pages make my creativity sustainable and they keep me ready so the most aligned opportunities never feel like ambushes.
What would happen if you treated your creativity like a muscle to train instead of one to strain under pressure?
Remember the old saying: If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready? Morning Pages help me stay ready, and maybe they’ll help you, too.