5am and it’s me and the birds. This is how I like it: when the house is sleeping. Outside, the low rumble of sanitation trucks. A lone scooter screeches down the block. Sometimes helicopters hover. A different kind of writer might pause to name the local birds (mourning doves, blue jays), open an ornithology app, but technology has no place here, and research could derail the entire hour. Bird, okay? Sweet chirping, soft moans, the distant caw of a shore bird flying towards the sea, enthusiastic and hopeful, daylight is already breaking. In winter, the tone of their song is full of desperation, a plea in the dark, accompanied by the heavy breath of the radiator, but apart from these temporary changes, it is what I have come to expect regardless of the weather, as a morning writer seeking comfort for God knows how long.
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tired? Sure, but I’m not sleeping much these days anyway, because I’m at that age where the body is worn out, waking up with a jerk at 3 a.m., skin on fire, sheets drenched in sweat. The body is a gremlin, but it’s not menopause essay. Whatever the case, exhaustion is inevitable. Blinking, shoulders hunched over the kettle, I’m up but barely, teetering on the line between waking and sleeping, that soft liminal place where the magic happens. who am I kidding? There is no magic. Writing can be difficult. But it’s either now or nowhere, in this pocket of time or no pocket, my dog is following me downstairs, rattling on the hardwood, before sitting on his perch by the window to look out at the world and wait his turn.
I just have to show up, be here, steal time, savor it, trust its possibility, be open and curious to whatever comes.
Now it is my turn. With coffee in hand I walk out of my office, skipping anything appropriate or serious, and head to my daughter’s room since she’s in college now. There is a fascination in bed writing. At her bedside I remember how and why this habit first took hold, my older children, and then the children, my mother’s brain so exhausted that I caught hold of my teacher, Meg Wolitzer, at the time, not about writing, not about this and not that, until Meg looked at me, ragged, at the edge of tears, from insomnia and constant need, from the gap between who we are and who we want to be. out, and replied with her quiet and endless kindness what would be the best advice I ever received: “Steal it. If writing matters to you, you have to find a way to steal time. No one will give you that.”
So the big theft started. Five minutes on the playground bench. In the nursery pickup line. Outside the dojo, on the football sideline, in a packed subway car, straddling the knees, anywhere. Parents know. another episode of Octonauts Every sentence is meaningful.
Until I Got Here: On the Wild Expanse of Ungodly Time.
Everyone has their own time when they are most creative. I spend time with birds, so one thing I could do for my writing was submit to it. This is when I’m least rigid, least self-aware, unconcerned with market-like crap or various kinds of “shoulds.” The critical mind is still stressed, and with it, so are its annoying companions, self-doubt and anxiety. The task list has not been written yet. You may have to wait to brush your teeth. I just have to show up, be here, steal time, savor it, trust its possibility, be open and curious to whatever comes.
This is hardly a revelation. Countless writers practice at dawn. Katherine Anne Porter. Hemingway, Vonnegut. Murakami. Toni Morrison said about her morning habit: “It’s not happening In Light, it’s there before he arrives” My writer-like neighbor is there long before me, the glow of his office lamp catching me like a thief as I fumble for coffee.
Writing early in the morning relieves pressure and reduces risk. Keeps things honest. Something about the prefrontal cortex: This porous gateway to softness, spontaneity, discovery, conducive to creation. Early morning is not the time to edit or evaluate work, to debrief. I’m not second guessing. Hell, I’m still half asleep, entangled in the dense web of dreams, entangled in the esoteric logic of the dream landscape, with nothing but the mystery of intuition to guide me. Well, I fall and keep falling.
I do it with pen and paper. Old school, perhaps. In the notebook I go out of my way, tricking myself through game exercises; As anyone who has ever seen the morning pages knows, it is that private space where language loosens up and voices come out, intimate and urgent. There is no protection, no stopping. No safety net. My handwriting is barely legible (making this transcription challenging) but the point is: longhand gets the job done. As someone who can pronounce a death sentence in a single sentence, morning movement counters that impulse, offering the freedom that exists in the cold screen of my laptop, where I’ll spend the rest of the day imprisoned in an editor’s hat.
Early morning is the time when I am most hopeful. I have not checked the news. The world is not completely screwed yet. I’m not thinking of a reader, not thinking about what so-and-so would say (“Hmmm why so much sex, huh, Lippman?”) I’m just intuitive and rhythmic, throbbing with an internal heartbeat, grateful for my third grade teacher Mrs. Spry whose banged-up arms clanged against the blackboard as she diligently taught us the alphabet because it’s the only way to keep pace with the expanse of images, Scattered pieces that accumulate like magnetic shavings, and take on a kind of woolly villi shape.
As a child, I would wake up in the morning, studying on the court with a bag of Cheerios while my father chased his forehand in a 6:30 a.m. tennis game. In college, the allure of the dark room kept me busy all night, drafting papers at ungodly hours, not only because I was a lazy person who needed the immediate warmth of a deadline, but because there was a special pleasure, an illicit kind of pleasure, in being awake while my roommates were unconscious, it was all a bit of a thrill. Of course, in college, getting up at 4 a.m. wasn’t something I was up for still Woke up, but that hour was still the hour that was waiting for me when I returned to it years later. After all, if we are not creatures of habit, then who are we? Everything I have written so far has been drafted before dawn.
The truth is that writing is a solitary task. But there is a palpable energy in knowing that you are alone yet not alone. This way, we hold each other.
The hour drags on. Most of my first novel was written between 4 and 4:30 in the morning. As my kids grew up and started sleeping better, I was able to move it up to 5 a.m., which was enough time to squeeze in an hour before making breakfast or school lunch. Now that they’re out of the house I start at 5:30. Rest till 6 o’clock.
Ritual Limit: Coffee. a notebook. Recently: My daughter’s bed. Neither lucky pen, nor meditation. Sometimes it becomes difficult to understand where the time has gone. No one is crying in the crib. The only whimper comes from my dog, as he tracks a nervous horse, already eager to go outside.
Jennifer Egan has said, “You can write regularly only if you are willing to write badly. You cannot write regularly and well. One must accept bad writing as a way to prime the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”
I do a lot of extremely poor writing early in the morning, but anyone who’s been cornered at a party by the person with “an amazing idea for a book” knows: You don’t have anything until it exists. Only once it’s on the page can you begin to consider how a story feels in the mind and how it lives on paper. This is where the vetting begins.
Sometimes I host a Zoom, welcoming others online to write quietly with me. Camera off. No chatting. no pants. If showing up for ourselves is hard, perhaps we’re less willing to hit the snooze button if we’re also showing up for each other. The truth is that writing is a solitary task. But there is a palpable energy in knowing that you are alone yet not alone. This way, we hold each other.
Take Louise Erdrich’s iconic poem advice to self. I’m a better person—editor, teacher, mother, partner, daughter, etc.—because I’ve dedicated this hour to writing. It’s not getting over me. Now, life. When the story is going well – and especially when it’s not – the puzzles on the page stay with me, and I’ll spend the day changing phrases or character choices, eager to revisit them in the morning.
No matter what, find your time and hold fast to it. Maybe it’s time for lunch at your desk. Maybe it will be 10 o’clock at night. 1 o’clock am. Whenever this happens, honor the times when you are most receptive and curious. Protect it with everything you’ve got. In the words of EB White: “A writer who waits for ideal conditions to work will die without putting a single word on paper.” Don’t wait. Steal it. Keep stealing it.
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hidden river by Sarah Lipman available from Tortoise Books.
