Whaaat? I can haz early timez?
Call me ‘slow’ to my face, and I’d probably disagree with you. But when it comes to overturning preconceptions of myself and my writing, I can be quite testudine. Years of long-distance commuting across the city to work, had—perhaps forgivably—convinced me that I was “not a morning person”. I’d simply assumed, I’m just not one of those people who can get up early to write!
Turns out, I was wrong.
My life’s changed since I quit that job. I went to Clarion West. I had a baby to look after—but I achieved my writing time while she slept. When she grew older she slept less, so I took days off here and there to write. Once she was old enough to invade Daddy’s writing space, I’d escape to write in the car or local library. That day-a-week kept me from going insane, but it was hardly productive. When our second child burst onto our household scene, I lost that day—and it never came back. I took what I could, a desperate and unfocused afternoon every few weeks, but I wrote almost nothing. My frustration grew.
Simultaneously, old habits had me up doing nothing much until midnight every night. I tried writing late, but my mental acuity more closely resembled jelly. It took months, flailing about in near-zero writing despair, before it dawned on me. If I took my writing seriously, I had more than enough time in my day to write.
I determined to try this early writing caper. If I could get up early for the Man, I could damn well do it for myself! I began waking at 5:00am to write, long before the sunrise.
Sure, it’s required some mental and physiological adjustments. I sleep soon after the kids are asleep—now that’s weird. Sometimes the early morning brain can be a little fuzzy… but there’s a medicine for that, and it’s called caffeine. More often than not, I jump out of bed—excited to write!
In the end the pay-off for me is that I’m writing for around two hours, each and every day.
Putting my writing first keeps my work fresh. There’s less to distract me when it is dark outside and everything is sleeping. On top of that, I’m always chewing on my stories. Whatever else my day might throw at me, I’m always scribbling notes for the next morning.
I’d much rather wake to the stars than with the sun. My new routine’s given me the mental space to tackle a novel… and after a month and a half, it’s coming along just fine, thank you.
No tortoise jokes, please!
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[My Clarion West buddy Andrew Romine has also recently written about becoming an early-morning writer on Inkpunks. Thanks Andy, for inspiring me to share my experience.]
