What I Learned Writing Every Weekday Morning in May
First: you do NOT need to write every day to be a writer.
For clarity: Sunday has been a “writing day” for me for a while. This was an experiment to see what might work for me in order to get my revisions done. Everything is trial and error. And I don’t usually like recommending something if I haven’t tried it.
I called it May Morning Meetups and usually had 1-3 other people joining me, Monday through Friday, 7am-8am, for 22 days. (*I did weekdays only.) There was one day early on a friend had to text me to let her into the room. (Yes, I overslept.) But other than that—I swear—I showed up looking how I look when I first get out of bed, cup of water and cup of coffee. I was even up early Memorial Day because of my dog, and logged on just in case, said fuck it why not.
I did this knowing life happens. My April birthday kicks off a long string of birthdays until July. My “constraint” is I have a day job. It’s flexible but exists. I picked mornings because I’m usually tired in the evenings, my son was coming home from college the first weekend in May, and I knew we would hang out. (I also didn’t even realize until he was home that I hadn’t seen him in four months. So, yeah, I disappeared for a minute to be with my family.)
My health is big a factor. One I’m vague about because it can feel like a long list, and I hate going through it. You can read here how I handled being activated one morning. “Triggered” after reading something that hit too close to home.
What did I learn & accomplish? What might I do differently in the future?
Doing this alone was hard. By alone I mean being the only one hosting. I usually give myself a lot of space but wanted to stick with my commitment because I felt able to. For a whole month though? I might need someone to help me out if I wanted to maintain this space for that amount of time.
Morning routines are awesome. Eventually, if you can keep going beyond the hour, the fog lifts and suddenly, things feel clearer. My intention was to commit to one project. But that was too much for my nervous system at the time, so I:
Read
Journaled
Dream journaled
Made some progress on 1 new piece
Began a piece
Made a radical revision to a central piece in my manuscript. You can read more about that piece here.
I am not able to give up rest. The state of my body was not great, hence my silence for a while. I’m not able to give up writing. I feel worse if I’m not writing, so everything else has to revolve around my creative time. Easier to say now than when everything in my life was a crisis.
Writing a lot is not at all the same as revision. Knowing versus actually feeling this helped me be kinder to myself.
Writing a book is not a race.
The difference between ritual and routine (or schedule) is intention. Routine doesn’t help me think. Ritual, however, denotes devotion. The byproduct of my devotion? The writing happens.
This is progress: I read a section of my manuscript that I initially thought needed way more work than it does. I thought it was the weakest because I hadn’t dedicated enough time and energy thinking about it. Reading it again, I got a clearer picture of its strengths and weaknesses. The words and images are always marinating. I count this as a win. Had I not dedicated this time, I wouldn’t even have wanted to look at it yet.
Is it brilliant? Finished? Done? L.O.L. No.
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen a post where I mention I haven’t kept track of how many books I’ve read or counted words written and pages filled. I know that works, but right now, because I’m prioritizing the manuscript, it doesn’t work for me. I come back to this thought at the end of the post.
A Reframe
The “what are you willing to sacrifice” question always seemed like a good question but never felt quite right. What are you able to prioritize made more sense which goes hand in hand with moving a little slower. Or what feels like slow.
Instead of “what are you willing to sacrifice to write your book” or “what are you willing to give up?” How about, what are you able to give up? What are you able to change? The concept of sacrifice feels like a privileged one. We hear it all the time. You must sacrifice xyz in order to be a success or achieve that goal, to do the thing. But if you’re a woman, mother, caretaker, person with chronic illness, someone struggling with mental illness, we’ve sacrificed enough and many times not by choice.
So I’ll leave you with this: progress isn’t always obvious. I can’t tell you how many words I wrote or pages I filled, but it was actually quite a bit. I don’t keep track of that the same way I don’t keep track of my weight. If my mind focuses on those things, I will add unnecessary pressure. It’s not the first time I found the slower I went, the more I got done. If I step away from counting, and move with the intention of discovery and curiosity, I get more done. I kind of figured this out by doing Jami’s 1000 Words of Summer. Which I love by the way! Especially when I wanted to clear space in my head or work on something new. But consider, what will honestly move you forward right now? Do that.
