I’ve started writing early on Saturday mornings. When the sun’s only just peeking over the landscape to the east, and the stillness of the pre-dawn hours makes for good thinking time.
There are two benefits to this.
One, I get to enjoy some quiet time before Maala wakes and the house becomes a rolling chorus of tantrums, excited squeals, and endless crashes, bangs, and requests to play trucks, dolls, or anything else.
Two, it forces me to go to bed earlier on Friday night so I can make the 5:30 am appointment. This is good because I need to catch up on sleep—we all do—and after a long stressful week navigating the conniving politics of big corporate, a night off the booze and the island delights is probably what the doctor ordered, if I ever went to one.
A friend of mine reached out to me a few weeks ago to ask about my experience writing Thought Dumpling. Was it worth it? Did I enjoy it? How do I start? He wants to write, too.
I shared some tactical tips on editing and writing, voice and tone. Stuff I think I’m okay at but still have so much to learn.
The main piece of advice I shared was to make time to write. The words don’t magically appear. You have to sit down and pull them out like a dentist maneuvering a stubborn tooth.
Often it’s just as nauseating and ugly. Just as excruciatingly slow and frustrating.
There are days—too many than I care to admit—when wimpy lines and vague ideas slop together to form stilted prose that I’m not proud of but I press on. I keep the fingers tip-tapping across the keyboard until something loosens—an idea or a line—like the dentist has finally administered the happy gas and it all becomes clear and content again.
There's one thing I’ve learned after writing every week and basically every day for the last 18 months—if you wait for the words to come to you, they won’t. If you wait for the perfect idea to start writing, you’ll be stuck waiting too long. If you wait for the ideal time, the time will pass you by.
Those words need corralling. Like a sheepdog herding livestock in the outback plains.
Ideas need nutrients—fertilizer in the form of planting your ass in a seat and opening the laptop. Ideas need to be trimmed, pruned, and cultivated until you see if they have any weight and substance to them.
Words need work. And the only way to get work done is to make time for it. You can’t wait for the time to appear, you have to strangle it from the other areas of your life and force it against its will to oblige, even if only for a few brief moments in the early morning.
Those are the rules. That’s the deal.
And so here I am, at 6:27 am on a Saturday morning, putting in my time and battle-testing those ideas. I’m feeling the caffeine from the first of two cups of coffee surge through my body. An invigorating sensation in these still moments before the ripples of the day turn into waves.
As the clock ticks on, I keep an ear pricked for signs of life downstairs. The slow, waking rumbles of Maala and Melanie as they rub the sleep from their eyes and stretch the energy into their bodies.
Soon the house will be full of noise and commotion. Activity and laughter. Impatient cries for shows, toys, walks, and other activities. Groans of tiredness, frustration, and parenting stress. It’s all part of the madness of life that I’ve learned to enjoy and embrace.
But for now, there’s still no signs of life, there’s still the stillness of the early morning.
Still time for writing.
So maybe I’ll write a little more.
Reauthenticating to log in made me lose my passion to tell you I’m waiting for a novel from you! Currently reading Tom Robbins and I think you’re that fun.