From evening to morning writer...
Many writers and writing gurus will tell you that true writers get up and do their best writing first thing in the morning, before anyone else is up. This has always made me feel inadequate.
I have always been an evening writer. In my previous life, I was a teacher and had to get up early to look after dogs and horses before work. To find time to write in the mornings, I would have had to get up at about 4:30am and that’s really not my best time. So, I developed a habit of writing in the evenings, once all my daily tasks were done, and found that I would much rather spend two hours writing than watching TV. Of course, it did mean that I was out of touch with most popular culture, but my partner and I made an effort to watch TV at the weekends when I might have had some writing time during the day.
Now, even though I’m a full-time author, I’ve still stuck to the pattern of writing in the evenings. Occasionally, when I know I have an engagement, I’ll set aside some time in the morning to do my writing, but when I’ve tried to write in the afternoon, it’s like the proverbial getting blood out of a stone. The words just don’t flow. In the evenings, it can take me a bit of time to get into it, but I’ll usually write between 1000 and 2000 words. Often, I’m so into it I have to force myself to stop or I won’t sleep.
In June, I went to the Self-Publishing Show Live in London. The opening keynote speaker was Tom Donnelly, a Hollywood screenwriter and author of Superdraft. Turns out he is a big advocate of writing first thing in the morning. As is Becca Syme (author success coach, and host of the Quitcast). Don’t get out your phone. Don’t answer your emails. Get on with your work, get on with your writing. First thing. As I listened to both their talks, much of what they said made sense. Still, all the time, a little voice in my brain was saying, ‘But I’m an evening writer.’
On the Sunday morning immediately after SPS Live, I happened to wake at about 6:15. The room was light and I knew I wouldn’t go back to sleep so I crept downstairs with my laptop. I didn’t allow myself to look at my phone, even just quickly, to check WhatsApp. I opened my laptop and started to write. Talk about flow. The words came easily and by the time anyone else was awake, I’d done around 1500 words. It was a lovely feeling to know that whatever else happened in the day (which turned out to be busy with horses, dogs and family commitments), I had made progress on my book in what felt like an effortless way.
That evening, I noticed I was making plans to start my writing early again the next day. When I’m with my partner, we leave at eight for the school run and then go off to walk dogs and look after horses, so I would need to be up early. Having spent about fifteen years of my day-job life getting up at 5.30, I knew I didn’t want to go back to that. 6:15 is fine. 5:30 not so much, because I find it tricky to go to bed early. I can’t sleep if other people are awake and moving around the house. Instead of setting an alarm, I told myself that if I woke early, I would get up and write. What would be, would be. Weirdly, I realised I was looking forward to the possibility. I woke at 6:15, tiptoed downstairs without waking anyone again, and by the time the others were up, I had done some planning, got some nuggets down on the screen, and started to write.
The evening before, when I was going through different mental calculations of how I might do my early morning writing, I realised that starting early must have worked for me. I must have enjoyed the process of that early morning writing if I was looking for ways to do it again.
I did it again the next day, and again the day after that. Most days that week, I wrote between 1500 and 2000 words before it was time to leave the house.
In his talk, Tom Donnelly said that creative flow happens best at the beginning and end of the day, and also out in nature. That’s another part of my work routine. When I walk the dogs, I often dictate into my phone, either snippets of dialogue or plans for sections of the story or ideas that suddenly occur to me. Ideas don’t come when I look for them; they come much more when I don’t actively hunt for them but just allow them to flow.
It’s easier when I’m at my own house in Shropshire. No school run and only a dog or two to please. Rather than starting my day with a walk, followed by admin and emails, as before, I now start my day with a cup of tea and an hour and a half or so of writing before our walk, leaving the day free for all the other business of being an indie author. I still write in the evenings. I now have writing slots at the beginning and end of the day instead of just at the end. And my productivity is up by masses. Even better, I’ve enjoyed the change in routine.
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