Writing every morning

It’s been a week since my last post. During this week, I’ve been writing on most of the days. My first move was to follow a common writing advice to wake up early and write first thing in the morning, and this worked for a few mornings. Then, various things came up, and one morning after another went without writing. But, on most of these days, I was able to write later in the day, usually in the afternoon and once late in the evening, when around 10:00 p.m., I realized that I hadn’t written and jumped into saving that day.

At first, missing morning writing felt as a failure, but reading about other people’s experiences has helped me once again. Jonathan Manor, for example, insists that writing is not, and should not be, “a race to finish”, but “a long immersion in a hot tub or a relaxing meditation.” At first, his metaphor of writing as relaxing meditation struck me as strange, if not inappropriate, but gradually I warmed up to it. In a way, I can compare writing to restorative yoga, which I usually do in the afternoon to re-energize and beat the afternoon slump. While yoga practice helps me to distress and refocus, productive writing creates a sense of achievement and boosts self-perception. Manor also maintains that night, not morning, is the best time for writing, arguing that clear-morning mind may present a hindrance to creative work, rather than being an impetus for it:

“If your mind is completely clear, wouldn’t it be clear of creativity too?

The reason that most writers — ‘good’ writers — choose to write at night, is because their mornings, afternoons, and early evenings have filled their bodies with inspiration.”

I am not sure I agree with this thesis. I guess it depends on the individual, but I can see why the late evening, when another “lost” day fades away, is more conducive for putting everything aside and getting to writing. As Gabriel Cohen explains, in his article “On Not Writing: And What Exactly It Means”: 

“In real life, getting to the computer is a matter of delayed momentum: I finally hit the keyboard not because I’ve been struck with a cinematic bolt of inspiration, but because the self-disgust of not writing finally gains enough mass to roll over my anxiety about what to write.”

This, however, does not mean that one should not write in the morning. In this regard, I like Jenna Avery’s point that:

“One of the biggest roadblocks to getting your writing done is limiting yourself to just one or two spaces [or times] to write. If conditions aren’t ideal, you’ll lose a lot of steam and think writing will be harder than it has to be. . . . You don’t want to get so precious about your writing that you can only write on Tuesdays in the north corner of the house when the wind is blowing from the east. :)”

She talks about a common tendency to present the act of writing as a bigger deal than it is, which may create an impression of the necessity of ideal conditions in order for you to be “able” to write. Avery acknowledges that in some circumstances writing may be easier than in others, but recommends to shift attention from the outside conditions to one’s attitude toward writing and how to enhance it through interrupting your normal writing patterns and “sneaking in under the radar of any resistance to writing.” To achieve that, she suggests, “Schedule 5 minutes in the morning to write, and don’t put any expectations on writing well. Then do it again each day.”

For the last several days, I’ve been following this advice. In the past, I used the pomodoro technique, according to which one needs to write for 25 minutes (one pomodoro), take a 2 minute break, then work for another pomodoro, and so on. In the morning, I often felt that I didn’t have 25 min to sit down and write. I also wanted to keep track on my writing time, which I usually did in pomodoros (and when you interrupt a pomodoro, it gets annulled), so I never sat down to write for less than 25 min. To be able to keep track on my writing time AND to write in smaller segments, I found a new app (Goals Calendar) for my android, which allows me to set a specific duration of time for which I’d like to work on a goal and to measure my progress. I noticed that, when I write for 5, 10, or 15 minutes in the morning, I always return back to writing in the afternoon and write for at least two hours a day. Not having expectations that I need to allocate a half an hour, or more, for a writing session, makes it easier for me to start and keep writing, and, during interruptions/breaks, I can think of what to write next. I’m also moving away from having one or two special places for writing, doing it wherever and whenever I can. These changes seem to reduce the grandiosity of the writing process and make me more comfortable with it.