Mornings are a precious thing. I arise, bleary-eyed and slow to move, driven by the eagerness that comes from the possibility a full day presents. At dawn, most of Baltimore still sleeps. The neighborhood I live in is quiet, aside from the runners who wake to beat the heat of summer and early commuters. My borrowed home: a collective of brown noise, soft hums, and the occasional snore—be it from my partner after she pulls the covers up over herself and drifts back into a deep sleep or the cat that sleeps atop her chest, tucked tightly into bagel formation. Downstairs, I let the dog out, who occasionally abides to empty his bladder while other times he curls up on the couch with his giant yellow duck, blue eyes looking up to me as if to demand five more minutes.

A cup of coffee in hand, I shuffle back upstairs in my fuzzy slippers, last year’s Christmas gift from my partner, and sit at my desk. The world beyond my window is a hue of blue under the rising distant sun. This is a practice of replenishment. Even on the worst of days, it provides me with the time and space for reflection and sensemaking. In the two hours I’ve carved out of the day, I write my essays, poems, and stories or edit them. It is a precious thing to me, mornings such as this: the coffee, my desk, two hours of solitude—this is the ritual I created for myself.

Years ago, T Kira Māhealani Madden posted on her Instagram about how she ritualizes her writing time as a way for her to make the process unique, differentiate it, make it more substantial than merely sitting down at her desk and waiting for the right words to come. It was a way to help her focus and add importance to the time she allowed herself to inhabit this space. In a 2019 interview with Lumina Journal, Madden was asked about her writing practice:

“…I have my amber candle on that table, which is my writing candle. And I only light it when I’m writing, and the smell tells me it’s time to work. I have certain ritualistic things that tell me this is a sacred time to do my work. I’m making the decision to do my work.”

A candle on her writing desk, the smell of the scented wax melting: that’s how she ritualizes her process. That’s what it takes for her to know that the time at her desk is “sacred.” Something as simple as her writing candle allows her to separate the task of writing from all other aspects of the process (reading and editing, for example) and allows for the necessary mental space to create.

The Risks of Over-Ritualizing

Despite my best efforts, only some mornings can start with a ritual. Sometimes, the body demands more rest. Sometimes, the cat and dog stir throughout the night, gradually stealing bed and blanket, until I’m left with only a sliver of both, awake and shivering. Sometimes, my partner and I get lost in our conversations or fall down the rabbit hole of TikToks, and it’s almost one in the morning by the time we fall asleep. Sometimes, we’re away from home, which, in turn, takes me away from my coffeemaker, my candles (yes, I, too, am a ritualistic candle burner), and my desk. This is worth keeping in perspective because there was a time when ritual was everything. If I awoke a few minutes past 5:30 a.m., I believed the whole day was ruined, along with any chance I had to write that morning. I suspect many other writers out there might experience a similar tendency. 

I’ve learned over the years that even our most precious rituals cannot be held as sacred and untouchable moments. If time is an arrow, writers must be the air encircling the arrow as it moves onward. Life is far too rigid to be met with more rigidity. This life requires much flexibility because I’m human; sometimes, I want to write, but sometimes I oversleep. 

As Stephen Graham Jones writes in his critique of ritualizing the writing process, “I shouldn’t need special conditions in order to get some words down on the page. Which is to say, I should be careful of ever ritualizing this thing.”

Writing Is About Balance (and, Sometimes, Accountability)

The trouble is the limited hours in a day. Part of my ritualizing the process stemmed from a lack of time: I believed, like Māhealani Madden, that I had to add importance to the process to make the most of each morning. And while this held true at first, I eventually slipped into a holding pattern: I was consistently writing, but I wasn’t editing. In the process of establishing my morning ritual, I fell into the trap of special conditions. The rare times I did edit, I felt I was robbing myself of precious time. And so, mornings were reserved solely for writing while editing fell to the wayside, ineffectively squeezed in between meetings or dinner or laundry because I’d tricked myself into believing that with adequate time, whatever was written would be publication ready. This, of course, is not true. In the plane of my mind, editing now holds far more significance, at times, than writing does. Which is to say, I’ve learned my tendencies as a writer, what my strengths and weaknesses are. For me, editing is where an essay or story opens itself up. So, why should I feel that writing is the most crucial aspect of the ritual? There is a necessary balance to reach, one that isn’t impossible to achieve in the writing ritual but one that I believe is easier to achieve when all facets of the process (research, writing, editing, and reading) are taken in equal measures, which sometimes requires that the ritual be broken.

Another trouble—and perhaps this is more a me problem, though I suspect I’m not alone—is the belief that writing is a solitary practice. As writers, we tend to spend much time on our own, locked away in offices or tucked into quiet corners, active participants in separating from reality for a spell. But that doesn’t mean the process must be done in a vacuum. 

This life requires much flexibility because I’m human; sometimes, I want to write, but sometimes I oversleep.

For years, I (wrongly) believed that writing alone was the pathway to becoming a better writer. I didn’t see the point of book clubs or writing groups and often found myself questioning the worth—sometimes rightfully—of workshops, both in my time as an undergraduate and those I’ve paid for through Catapult or Tin House. This was my ego demanding solitude. Once I pushed my ego aside and opened myself up to the possibilities, found community in Mud Season Review, Write or Die Magazine, Towson University’s graduate program, and, eventually, the Thriving Writers, I felt more richly engaged with my own work and the work of others. 

At the start of summer, I took this a step further and signed up for the Morning Writing Club, run by Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else. The idea is simple: accountability. It’s a no- to low-pressure subtle buddy system that works by tracking the mornings you’ve worked on the writing process and sharing it with others however best fits your needs. On Friday mornings, there’s a Zoom write-in session where everyone logs on, mutes themselves, and writes together for two hours. Chelsea opens the meeting up for a brief fifteen-minute recap at the end of the two hours. Though I’ve only attended two of these write-in sessions so far due to sickness and travel, the sense of community is vital. The idea of showing up, so to speak, while allowing room for editing, reading, writing, or struggling as integral parts of the process have changed how I view my own morning ritual. 

Now, my mornings are far less about differentiating writing from editing or reading—and certainly less about differentiating myself from other writers in the metaphorical (or actual) room. Rather my mornings are now about cultivating a more balanced approach to writing; I write in pursuit of ideas, not trends. Had I kept myself siloed off, I might still be caught in that holding pattern. And nothing good happens in a silo.