5 Mornings in the Life of an Author: A Guest Post by Kerri Maher
I’m on maternity leave! During this time, a few of my favorite authors offered to step up and write guest posts so that this blog would remain active while I adjust to my new role as a mother. I may also be a bit slower to respond. Thanks for understanding and for being so supportive of me, my family, and my blog. Want to donate a few dollars to keep this blog running or perhaps contribute to my diaper fund? You can do so on Venmo or Paypal.
5 Mornings in the Life of an Author: A Guest Post by Kerri Maher
It’s an honor to be here on the Hasty Book List blog, and BIG congrats to Ashley as she embarks on the adventure of motherhood! My own daughter is 12 now, which is impossible to believe – it seems like just yesterday that I was frantically using her naps, then precious morning nursey school time, to get my writing in. But those time-pressured years have stood me in good stead, enabling me to get whole novels written in 3-ish hour a day chunks, as you’ll see below.
As a variation on the “Day in the Life of an Author” theme, I’m going to tell you about an average week of 5 Mornings in the Life of an Author. If this whets your appetite, I hope you’ll join me on Instagram for #morningswiththewriter @kerrimaherwriter where I do a reel every Friday explaining something about what gets the magic going.
Monday: Get up, caffeinate with coffee (usually black, sometimes with foamed milk), send my daughter off to school on a big yellow school bus, then walk the dog—Let’s call these “The Usual,” as they are pretty much the first 4 steps in every morning’s routine these past several months, and fills up 7am-9am. A note about the walking: I often “read” on my walks, using my Libro.Fm subscription to listen to an audiobook (current read: The Midnight Library—now I get why it was on the NYT bestseller list for 100 years!). But sometimes on my walks, I’m also writing, because I’m mulling over my characters or a knotty plot issue; I’ve made many writing breakthroughs on morning walks.
This fall, I’m also teaching 2 courses at Emerson College, and on Mondays I offer optional “Sprints” to both of my classes via Zoom. This is how it works: at 10am, everyone who can hops on Zoom; we do a quick breathing exercise to ground us, I offer a short inspirational reading (like from Yung Pueblo, Anne Lamott, or Steven King), then we all turn off our audio but keep our cameras on while we work on our writing for 30 minutes Then I let the students talk amongst themselves while I continue to write for another 15 minutes. I’ve gotten a lot of writing done this way, and this week, I brainstormed for a new novel idea – historical #5!
Tuesday: After The Usual, I had my weekly appointment with a gifted myofascial release (MFR) therapist. MFR is a special kind of body work that was recommended by my orthopedic doctor to help me with some scar tissue and rebalancing problems I have as a result of being born with hip dysplasia, and having several surgeries on my hips including bilateral hip replacements in 2004. This is the subject for a different and longer piece of writing, but I’ll just say here that working in this way with my hips has been crucial to my development as a writer this past year—the “release” in MFR has helped me get in touch with emotions and ideas I hadn’t accessed in other ways. (NB: I made the commitment this week to move the MFR and all other possible appointments of this kind to the afternoon to preserve mornings for writing.)
Wednesday: After The Usual, I wrote for 2 hours. I am a morning writer. I need my freshest, most well-rested and caffeinated mind for the creation of books. Also, if I don’t write first thing, the rest of the day tends to expand and crowd it out. I learned to schedule my writing days by reading The Clockwork Muse back in graduate school – I highly recommend it if you’re trying to figure out how to structure a stable, sustainable routine. It’s short, practical, and easy to read!
Thursday: After The Usual, I wrote for another 2.5 hours – I’m able to get about 1500 words done in this amount of time. This is a good time to point out that I do other work later in the day: emails, teaching-related work, interviews, other non-book writing (like this piece!), and parenting when my daughter gets home from school.
Friday: Today, I walked a little later in the morning than The Usual, which gave me time to do an installment of #morningswiththewriter. Then, at 9:30 I met local writer-friend Cheryl Pappas for a gorgeous walk around a nearby reservoir. This is so important! Communing with other writers is so essential to the writing life (all the better if you can do it while also getting the daily exercise in!). Writer-friends offer invaluable support in the form of commiseration, fresh ideas, and hugs. My walk with Cheryl provided all three, which meant I could get to my desk invigorated and write for about 2 hours.
5 Mornings in the Life of an Author: A Guest Post by Kerri Maher
