Serenity… refocus – seek joy – thrive

You know those people – they say they get up before dawn, grab their coffee and then sit down and clatter out thousands of words before the morning paper even hits the door?

 
Yeah, that’s not me. I so want it to be but I am not, I have discovered, an early morning writer. This realization has been a shock to me, because I really love mornings, particularly that time just before dawn. Even if I am not watching it arrive I know the light is on its way, the birds are twittering their greetings, all else is city silent – this is my favorite time of day. But it turns out it’s my favorite time to be – not to do.

And really, I should have known. Instead of trying to fit myself into some writerly writer mental image that I have, it would have been a good idea to remember that, unless there is an emergency that requires me to get it together RIGHT NOW, I tend to wake up somewhat incomplete. Parts of my psyche, it would appear, take off as soon as I go to sleep and I spend the first couple of hours after I wake puttering around, coaxing them back into place. I still get flashes of inspiration before I am completely reassembled, mind you – those whispers of the dawn breeze – but my transcription of these undoubtedly brilliant insights does not soar; it plods along, staggers a bit and then flops. Kinda like trying to launch a turkey into an eagle’s nest.

So, what to do? Go with what you know, sure – but also go with who you are, seems the best idea. I can still make those early mornings work for me, as a writer, but only if I change things a bit. Throw out all my writerly writer preconceptions (and misconceptions) and work with my mornings, instead of against them. How to do that?

Let them be. Let the dawn evolve, allow my mind to wander at will over anything and nothing. If a thought occurs, there is no need to rush to get it into a blog post or something. Maybe that thought is only a teaser. Perhaps if I instead take the time to examine it, turn it over and peer into its depths, and scrape away any excess I’ll find that what I was really looking for (or what was really looking for me) lay just underneath.

If it’s shy or coy, it may take more than one morning, or one week so take notes along the way, but let things develop as they will. And when ready, write.

[photo of typewriter keys by Laineys Repertoire via Essential Prose – which looks like a good blog to bookmark itself.]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 9:08 am and is filed under bellybutton bedazzlement, journal, the breeze at dawn, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.