5am is early

This is the end of my fifth week of full-time employment.

I am very happy to say that I have kept up my practice of getting up at 5am to squeeze some writing in before the kids wake up and the chaos of the day takes over. I honestly didn’t know if I would stick with it. The alarm goes off at 5 and I turn it off, then come very close to falling back asleep, but as I’m wavering on the edge of consciousness I have this strange sense that my characters need me. It’s like I’ve created a whole world, and because it’s not finished I feel responsible for it. It’s oddly compelling.

But actually, even that’s not enough to motivate me out of my nice warm bed. What actually gets me moving is knowing that this is the only chance I will have ALL DAY to work on my story. If I don’t get my ass up and moving, a whole day will go by without me making any progress towards finishing it. I can’t stomach the thought.

The couple days I have skipped have been very cranky days. I don’t know if it’s causal, but there’s definitely a correlation.

See, the thing is, corporate writing is fine and all – I still count myself lucky to do what I love for a living – but it’s not nearly as satisfying as my fiction. I love telling stories.

In fact, one of the reasons I’m so gun-ho to finish this novel is that I have a whole collection of new story ideas that I’m just dying to play with. Shiny new stories, lined up like toys after a five-year-old’s birthday party (and trust me – that was a mountain of toys).

So hur-ray for finding time to write. And hur-ray coffee, because 5am is still really effing early.