Jan 14 2009
First thing in the morning (I’ll take two of those)
Of all the things the morning lacks, the most troubling is the lack of more than one ‘first thing’ to every morning. Stuff that I schedule to the ‘first thing in the morning’ gets done, other stuff, not so much.
A few years back when my writing was getting along better than it is now, I wrote first thing in the morning, every morning, and my novel went along just fine until I began to get distracted and stopped doing it that way.
Published writers tend to work that way, according to Lawrence Block. For one of his books on writing, he did a survey of other published writers about their writing habits. Most of them were first thing in the morning, seven day a week writers.
Exercise is another thing that gets done first thing in the morning. Many times when I have made the resolution to improve my health, I have done exercise first thing in the morning. Putting it off til later meant not doing it at all.
When to begin the morning’s first thing is also a question. When I get up after daylight, I can get distracted by things I see out the window. Mostly escaped goats, but other times escaped sheep. Sometimes the dog will be chewing on something she’s not supposed to. Like a chicken.
One thing that’s a major distraction is the internet. I wake up, and there is the computer standing there and I say to myself, I’ll just check out my blog for new comments, or, I’ll just check to see if I earned anthing on Helium or Associated Content or Triond. Next thing I know, it’s too late to fit in my writing to this morning’s particular ‘first thing’.
So, this morning I decided to declare TWO ‘first things’. The first ‘first thing’ was exercise. I grabbed a CD to play— I use them to time my exercise session— climbed on my exercise machine and got going. Next time I am going to use a CD that doesn’t have the song ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ on it. If I didn’t fear the Reaper, I wouldn’t be exercising.
The next ‘first thing’ was the writing. I started up my ‘New Novelist’ software, wasted some time and effort trying to figure out how it worked, and actually got stuff written. Yoo Hoo! Few more months of that and I’ll be done.
And now, I’m blogging. Is this to be considered a third ‘first thing in the morning’? I’ll have to get back to you on that one.
