The Magic Hour
Find your magic writing hour and use it to change your future.
I don’t know about you but every morning I wake up with the hope and inspiration that today will be the day. You know the one. The one when that career making idea will hit, the idea that will catapult you to a real writing life, that will be the foundation for making enough money to live off of without worrying if you’ll make the rent next month, to be able to enjoy life and with the ability for your writing being a big part of that.
Every morning when I get up I’m raring to go, and I think even if I don’t come up with that life changing idea, as long as I keep writing good articles, keep producing at a constant rate, it’ll come in time. I know I have a whole day ahead of me, hours and hours to sit and write my heart out, get those ideas down that might help others, entertain others, make others think about things differently. Basically, I have the hope that something is going to change to take my writing career up a notch.
But every morning it’s the same thing. “I just need a little time to wake up,” I think. “A cup of coffee. Maybe an episode of that new show I started watching. If I try to start writing now, I’ll be too muddled to say anything interesting, cohesive, understandable and then I’ll just get frustrated which will ruin the whole day.”
And while there’s some truth to this, I also know that one episode will turn into two or three, and if I start with Youtube, before I know it I’ll be searching for “funniest water slide fails” or “cute baby panda videos”. None of these things have ever lead to me writing anything at all. (Though if you’re feeling stressed out the cute baby pandas are definitely the way to go!)
Before I even start down this path I know it will short circuit that special brand of early morning inspiration I feel. I might be able to hold onto it for an hour, depending on how early I get up, maybe two. But after that, I develop the feeling that the day is simply lost.
Of course it’s not, not really, and I do get some writing done eventually. But I just feel like the potential for catching ahold of that elusive thread that will lead me to write something that will change my direction or allow me to establish something that will lead to a significant work, be it a book or collection of essays, poetry, short stories or whatever, has been lost. The rest of the day is then spent trying to come up with something to write about and churning it out.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to imply that unless I come up with some kind of life changinging writing idea first thing in the morning I don’t enjoy any of the writing I do. Of course I enjoy it or I wouldn’t be doing it. Usually, anyway. We all have those days it feels more like pulling teeth than gliding along on the River Seine. Those days when you fall back on an idea just because you can write it even if you don’t necessarily feel inspired to write it. It’s interesting perhaps, educational maybe, but not inspiring.
Early morning, or what I’ve just begun thinking of as “first morning” is the time of hope for me. It’s my Magic Hour. If my muse is ever going to feel like showing up, that’s the time she’ll come. Because those are the moments of endless possibility. That’s the time when I believe I can do anything, writing anything, become anything. It is limitless potential and my mind is awash with thoughts of writing poetry, fiction, novels, essays that influence, ideas that change thing, even inventions of new types of writing and though I’m not sure what these may be it doesn’t matter, it’s the possibility that’s important.
It’s not that I think that these magic moments will automatically lead to these things, nor do I believe any of them will come easily. I just believe that they will come.
I believe we all have a magic hour, a time of day that is not defined necessarily by ideas, or productivity or energy level. It’s that time of day when nothing seems impossible. That’s the true miracle of the magic hour. It’s the time that self doubt is banished and we know ourselves for who we truly are, who can be and what our writing can become. Any concern that we are imposters is banished from our minds, there is simply no room for it with all that is possible vying for our attention.
Yet I think that there is something within many of us that sabotages our ability to take hold of these precious moments. It’s a kind of demon who is always searching for the most positive within us to ruin, to prevent. Whether he comes in the form of fear, doubt, or the internalized remarks of others who taught us we would never be good enough, that we deserve only criticism, his purpose is to derail us from finding out just what we are made of.
He is savvy though, this writing demon. He doesn’t convince us we can’t write at all, or that no one will ever read our work or that we will never have anything of worth to share. He knows that as soon as we have any degree of success, even just the very first article or poem we publish we will be able to shout him down. No, instead he lets us believe in the mediocre, the nothing special, the average, ordinary, every man’s ability.
“You published something? You and about a million others today!”
“Your story got how many views? That’s good I suppose but it’s not going slingshot you into popularity.”
“Your earnings just went up to what after a year? That’s about what all those newby writers made in their first month.
“Sure you have what it takes to put a pretty good essay together. But if you were going to strike it big, you would have already. That’s okay though, don’t feel bad, you’re in good company. With those million or so other writers that also published something today. Only one in that million will ever stand out. Just because you’re not that one isn’t anything to be ashamed of.”
It’s as if he gives with one hand but takes away far more with the other. He lets us have only what he has to so as not be proven wrong and overridden. Each of us has one of these writing demons that plagues us. We don’t recognize them for what they are because they come disguised in the clothing of the rational, the one who helps us see what is real, who wants to help us grow up and let go of childish fantasies.
But while Peter Pan may have had some of it wrong, he also had a good deal right. The part he missed was understanding that growing up does not mean you must let go of everything that defined childhood. The constant wonder you felt when discovering things for the first time, never feeling the need to limit imagination and creativity, always coming up with new ideas, none of which were too big, or too outlandish or too hard, none of which were impossible. In fact, the word impossible doesn’t even have a place in childhood. When we are children, all our moments are magical, all of them say to us our future will be glorious and whatever it is we choose to make it.
When we grow up perhaps those magic moments shrink, but they don’t disappear all together. They may even go into hiding for those of us who have constant obstacles, opposition, abuse and betrayal in our lives. But they don’t disappear. Each of us still has a magic hour that calls us back to the hopefulness, the purity of childhood belief. During this time anything is possible.
The Takeaway — A Challenge
When is that time of day for you? Make the commitment that today you will block whatever is standing in the way of your belief that you can do anything you choose with your writing, and that you will take that hour for yourself and use it if not to generate hope and belief in your endless potential. During that hour, don’t write what you think you should, what you think will get you views or what comes from a formula. Let go and write what you want to write, what you’ve dreamed of writing, what you’ve perhaps let go of because it didn’t seem realistic or rational.
Write the beginning of a play or book or series of essays on a topic that you are truly passionate about. Write your opinion on something you’ve been holding in because it might seem controversial. Open your mind and your heart and let whatever is there come to the forefront and write. But whatever you do don’t waste another one of your magical hours. You only have so many allotted to you and once one is gone you won’t get it back. You are not mediocre. You are special, you are talented and you deserve to have magic in life. Let it happen.
If you took on this challenge, tell us about it in the comments. Let us share in your hope, your belief in yourself and the possibility that is you.
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