Hedera,
Well, I did them for about a year, maybe two. (I need to do them again). The block I had was more like a life block. When I did the morning pages, I found them most helpful as a sort of a dialogue: I asked them questions and let them answer. It got me focussed on my goals, and little miracles started to happen. Singing jobs began to come my way, I began to get very creative about how to sing better, and how to change my life. This eventually led me to moving to Germany, to do singing auditions, etc. and here I am.
(Unfortunately, it doesn't all end there, I found ways to throw up more blocks, which I am now trying to work through in many different ways.)
The little exercises and Artist Dates did more perhaps to get me writing however, as they opened me up to things beyond my own mind. (eventually led me to the Tarot!) Strange new images, thoughts and passions began to pour into me, and I followed them:
I did silly things like make cakes with six different colors of frosting, dye easter eggs when it wasn't easter, experiment with painting, drawing etc. I went through a period of painting dozens of little fishes, neon tetras which even now can find their way into the vacuum cleaner, another period of making dozens of paper roses, (glow in the dark white paper roses, anyone?) a period of making little diaramas of cows and cherry trees in tiny boxes, a period of trying to learn to knit!
One day the need to write took over me like an ocean. I couldn't stop the flow. I would begin writing about midnight every night, write all night, into the next morning, sleep a bit, get up and write some more. Sometimes the words decided to come up in rhyme, the rhymes I called the "voice of the serpent" because they were very sardonic.
It was all very amazing to me. I have always written, am glib with words, but this glibness is usually just air, so it is easy to lose interest.
This writing was different, it was like blood. I called it my "virgin blood revenge" -- it came from a very deep and strange place within.
Anyhow I think that writing and thinking and experiencing are the same thing. Unblocking writing energy is like unblocking life energy, and vice versa.
Let me know if any of this resonates.
P.S. Now that I think of it, it was the writing excercises in her second book, the
Vein of Gold that eventually stimulated the need to write.