I do the vast majority of my writing before nine a.m. When I “novelized” Tripio https://www.amazon.com/Tripio-novel-Starbucks-Millionaire-Novelist-ebook/dp/B07NQ1413V it took me approximately 52 hours. Again, the vast majority of it was done between four and nine a.m. I worked on it on some mornings when I had to be in to work by six thirty. There are a million reasons why I find morning writing productive.

The first one is now that I don’t have get young children off to their own days, I have re-connected with the calm beauty of the early morning. I even enjoy the time of day called “God’s left hand”: the hour of pre-dawn when you can hear the birds in the warm weather, but not see them. I will get back to all that in later posts. Today, I just wanted to write one sentence for a post. That is what I told myself. Get to the laptop and write one sentence. I compare it to the bargain I make with myself when I don’t feel like dragging my ass to the gym for some cardio and resistance. I tell myself to just get there, you aren’t preparing for a decathlon, so just get there. And typically, I do that. I make it to the cross-trainer and about 15 minutes after that, my body and mind are feeling just dandy.

As you have read above, the one sentence was written. Just as experience has taught me, I found what I was looking for: the actual subject for today’s post. Here it is: I have one of the best practices that anyone can honor if they are planning to write any piece of any length. My own journey has told me that it ain’t “read the classics”. It ain’t get an MFA in Creative Writing. It ain’t attend readings or workshops. It ain’t none of that. If that writing project is going to get finished, you can’t wait for inspiration, you can’t expect genius to wake you up and get you going. The best way to finish your project is this: write when you don’t want to. Make yourself do the ugly, gritty dirty work of writing. And writing some more. That is what worked for me to date. A lot of the times I began a productive stretch of writing because I told myself I would be happy just getting one Tripio sentence out of me and onto the screen or paper. It worked for Tripio and it worked just now.

“May I help who’s next?”