Writer at the Gates of Dawn

Start each day writing... I wish!

I always wanted to be the kind of person who writes early in the morning. I love the idea of getting up, making a cup of cardamom or Assam tea, and starting my day by doing something creative while I'm feeling fresh. The house is quiet, nobody bothers me, and I can enjoy the stillness as the sun rises. But in practice, it never seems to work like that.

For most of my life I've been a night owl. Until I was in my fifties, it was very rare for me to go to bed before midnight. In my twenties, I was usually up until after two. Getting up before 8am was always a struggle. Being compos mentis enough to actually write anything before 9am - let alone anything good - was, realistically, completely out of the question.

These days, since moving to Maine, my schedule is very different. I'm usually up early, often before the dawn. By five most days, I'm usually wide awake, and I love it. But I still haven't managed to get into the habit of early morning writing.

This is what I wake up to.

It's not my sleep schedule to blame this time, though. It's my work schedule.

Most of my clients for the last few years have been based in Europe and the Middle East, so they’re typically six to nine hours ahead of me. Early mornings are the best time to talk to them or confer with colleagues on Slack. It's not unusual for me to have meetings at 7am, or even earlier. Much though I like the idea of starting my day with an hour or two of writing, that time is usually spent dealing with emails, checking messages, and preparing for the workday.

I could, I suppose, work early at weekends, but Saturdays and Sundays are usually when I like to relax with a book for a while before I start on the household chores, dealing with the garden, and figuring out the week's menu so we can do the grocery shopping.

Most of my writing is done in the late afternoon. I tend to finish work somewhere around three, and then, if I'm not too exhausted, I'll spend a couple of hours working on other projects. It's not ideal. After a day dealing with spreadsheets, blogs, press releases, marketing material, and the like, I'm often not in the mood for being creative. Particularly if I've spent the day writing corporate “content”, my head is simply in the wrong space for writing fiction. I try to do a little every day, but my heart really isn't in it some days. Most days, if I’m being honest.

In practice, my most productive days are weekends, when I'm not burned out from my day job, and I can devote several hours to writing. Over the last couple of years, I've managed to crank out a fair amount of material working this way, but I still dream of a lifestyle where I can get up and write for an hour before I even think about anything else. Some day… maybe when I’m retired?