I joined the Morning Writing Club

... and I love it.

If you’ve been around here for even a short while, you know that I recently started trying to become a night writer.

In terms of routine, it’s been fine. I’ve been doing it. But sitting down in front of the computer after a full of day of work, when my brain and body are spent, when my spouse, with whom I do not get enough time, is on the couch six feet away, is decidedly not fun.

Morning writing is fun for me. Like, on my personal scale of fun things, it is a 10/10. By comparison, night writing feels like kind of a slog.

Recently I made a new writer friend and we were asking all the intro questions: what do you write, what do you read, dream magazine acceptances, etc. And because this new friend has a kid the exact same age as mine, I was particularly interested in the when and the how. I explained my last-resort quest to become a night writer and he said that he can research at night but if he writes at night, it all has to be rewritten in the morning.

I don’t know if that’s true for me, but I do know that writing in the morning feels more natural, comes with more ease.

Enter Chelsea Hodson’s Morning Writing Club.

I learned about the Morning Writing Club from this excellent podcast interview, but at first I thought it wouldn’t work for me because it’s 8-10am my time. At 8, I am in the middle of school dropoff and my work day starts around 9:20 at the latest. But then I read that not everyone stays for the whole two hours and so I thought why not? It’s nine bucks. I’ll try it for a month and see how it goes.

Here’s how Morning Writing Club works: you sign up and Chelsea sends you a Zoom link and a spreadsheet where you can optionally track your time, word count, inspiration, etc. It’s Monday through Friday. Chelsea kicks off every session but the majority is silent. Cameras and mics off, just the energy of a bunch of people writing at the same time. There are some extras like a monthly Q&A and a newsletter. But the main thing is the Zoom. The main thing is accountability.

If school dropoff goes well, I have roughly 40 minutes a day to be on this Zoom. This did not seem like writing time to me before. It seemed like laundry time or dishes time or checking work emails time. Suddenly, magically, it seems like writing time. A lot can happen in 40 minutes a day, if those 40 minutes are consistent.

Here’s my log of the first week. I’m moving things around and cutting right now so this might not seem like much on paper but it actually represents a ton of progress in my manuscript. I have been putting these notes in the group spreadsheet, too, and reading over everyone else’s notes provides a nice little energy boost.

It’s only been a week but so far I love it! I told myself I would stick with it for at least a month, and I don’t think that will be hard because I already so look forward to logging onto the Zoom. When I woke up yesterday and there was no Morning Writing Club, I missed it.

I have a little Morning Writing Club ritual already, to help shift my mind from momming to writing. I light this moon candle and I play this song on every speaker in the apartment:

And then I just get into it because I have a hard stop and there is no time to waste.

I’ve been actively working on the glass house novel but I’m also in the middle of a conceptual breakthrough on the pond novel. More on that next week…