This is what I’ve been doing all week. I’m up at Four In The Morning. I’m actually up before four, but by four I’m usually writing and well into a cup of coffee. The second cup comes in at about six, but four is when I’ve been pretty much hitting my stride.
I’ve had to make some time management decisions lately and let me tell you, it sucks. I like early mornings/late nights, or maybe it’s late nights/early mornings. Hell, I’m so tired I don’t know anymore. But, in order to get anything done and done the way I need it done, and that’s the key right there, ya know… the way I NEED it done, I had to make a few changes. One was that I go to bed a little earlier and get up no later than three in the morning.
When I writing more, I was doing so in the middle of the night. The house is asleep. No one can bother me and I can’t make a whole hell of a lot of noise cleaning or cooking or do the laundry. I could put in my earbuds, turn on the music, and write for several hours. There were a few people on Twitter and we would converse every so often, but set a timer, some tunes, and I was good to go until around five or six…
Then public school dreams for my son crept into his brain and shot all that to shit. With that, I was getting up at five-thirty, to bed at ten, homework until nine, and empty nest syndrome that left me with so many hours on my hands, I didn’t know what to do. I tried for weeks, months to write during the day, I mean, I had all these empty hours, right? It should be easy to get things done, but… Nope. I would stare at the screen, walk around, stare at the screen some more, walk around… I wasn’t getting words in and I wasn’t walking off the pounds. It was miserable.
I got the idea to try this getting up at two and three from another author. She does it when she’s on deadline and I can tell you I’m on two so… But then, deadlines are when I do my best work. These books should’ve been done long ago, but that’s a story for another day.
Suffice it to say, I’ve gotten more writing done in the last four days than I have in the last month. I know where the stories are going and know that they’ll be done in time for publication. Sometimes I have to be pushed to my limits in order to find a solution. Sometimes I have to have no other options before I’ll find something that might actually work. Either way, while I’m still exhausted, some changes have been made the household schedule that’s allowing me the chance to try out this insane way of working. I get up, write for a while, get my son up, the spouse gets up, I get food, throw in a load of laundry, get more coffee, make the bed, say bye to them, work a little more, and around eight am I crash for a couple of hours. I do housework, walk, shower, work, get dinner started, get my son from school, nap again cause I’m beat, homework, family, a few oh shit moments when I realize I forgot to do something, and then, bed to do it all over again. I don’t know how sustainable it is, but we’re about to find out… I’ll keep you posted…
~lissa
