A Good Time To Write

I often advise my clients and students who are having trouble writing with any regularity to pick a specific time and place to work each day. Starting can be one of the hardest parts for a lot of people, that feeling of being stone cold and uninspired is so daunting, so like the experience of failure itself that they’d rather clean their gutters than do this thing they actually love doing. If you choose a specific time, you can prepare yourself mentally before you sit down. Also, there’s something Pavlovian that often kicks in after a week or two, where you begin shifting to this creative frame of mind as you go through the ritual of making the coffee and turning on your computer.

This has certainly been the case for me. I’m such a creature of habit that I have certain mugs I use for coffee and other mugs for tea, and a specific order for how I stack our colored dinner plates in the cabinet. You could set your watch by what time I’m at my desk each morning. It’s very comfortable for me, and I can get a little cranky when my routine is disturbed. But if I’m not careful, it can feel a bit restrictive too, as if 6:22 AM is the only time I can really start writing.

I realized this recently when I found myself on a couple occasions with totally open afternoons and a story I wanted to get back to. The challenge, as always, was letting go of everything I’d been thinking about and reading about and watching about through the morning and early afternoon. It seems so important when it’s rumbling around my head. Something important has energy, and I always want energy. But my mind needs to be clear, needs to be made available for the new ideas I hope will come, and so I sit there, drinking tea, waiting and forgetting.

I’m forgetting to care about what seemed important and waiting for a little inspiration. The forgetting isn’t really hard if you know that’s what you’re doing. Pull your attention from anything and it fades; put your attention on something else and it grows. I’ve been practicing this my whole life, and yet it still seems a little magical every time I do so. How easy to doubt the very source of all my power, as if there were really something other than the direction of my focus that could change what I see and feel and create.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com