Chicago from The Drake at magic hour
Photographers call it the golden hour. Cinematographers tend to use magic hour. Me? I definitely go for magic because I like the sense of alchemy that it suggests. The magic hour is sunup and sundown, when, for an hour or so, light is so mellow that any subject is likely to look great in a picture. I never really knew of this until I showed some shots of Chicago to a photographer friend of mine.
When he explained that many photographers like to hit the road early in the morning and late in the afternoon in search of subjects to shoot when the light is so perfect for them, I started thinking that it would be great if there were a window of opportunity for each writer to sit down and write really well within two definite points in time, every day. And if you didn’t want to write at all, fine, but imagine the sense of deliverance in knowing that at time x you are at your best writing self? Blimey. I was over-salivating already.
A few months later, finally off my full-time job, I sat at the table in my study early one morning, thrilled at the prospect that I could start writing before 9 am and that the day was stretching ahead of me without interruptions. The day after would be the same, and so on and on until PhD submission and maybe later if I was lucky.
Quite rapidly though I realised that my propensity to get going at the office after 2 pm had nothing to do with chronic absent-mindedness. I was naturally good as day edged into night, somewhere out there (in a café), where I never felt like life was passing me by (which it did when I was locked at home), but where I could equally be part of it without the need to engage (which is what we have to do in an office).
When I first discussed this with my mentor (‘Honestly, I have all of this time and I fritter three quarters of it! I only write decent stuff in Starbucks or equivalent! Why cannot I do it at home in my nightie?! Argh, argh, argh!), he asked this: ‘If you work well in the afternoon and at Starbucks, why are you fighting it?’
The answer was complex and yet, in a sense, also very simple. Not only had I been wired to get up early and get to school or work before 9 am since I was six, but I also harboured the subconscious protestant value that suggested that, in order to be productive, one needed to:
1- adhere to a schedule;
2- be seen to adhere to this schedule (presenteeism, as it’s called in corpo lingo);
3- never break off this schedule unless it’s the weekend.
Slowly, and fighting it all the way, I can assure you, I started to dedicate my mornings to ‘other things’ or, as I call it rather more prosaically, to fucking around. This involved anything from household things to merely thinking about what I wanted to write and how to write it. When Vogue came through the door I would read it there and then. If a friend called up unexpectedly, I would chat away for two hours. Some days I did not write at all, others I wrote very little, mostly very late in the afternoon. All of this not writing made me feel uneasy in many ways. I had dreamt of days dedicated to my pursuits many times as I was making mental notes across Blackfriars Bridge in the morning (down to Stamford Street) and at night (back up to the flat at St Paul’s) and now I just did not know how the heck creativity and time for it were going to fit together.
One day, many months later, I sat down at my computer at 13:48. I wrote nicely until 15.30 when I re-read the few pages, and noted that I had clocked up 1,700 nice words. Gosh, if only I could do that every time, right?
Well, I did. Within a few days I noticed that I was ready to write at 13.48, no exceptions. Interestingly, although my favourite locus remained the café, writing at home started to happen without the sense of creeping dread that had first afflicted me. Two and a bit years later, I can tell you that I’ve found my magic hour and that it starts just before two, without fail. I know that all of this must sound, in a way, counter-productive for those writers who do not have the luxury to work at whatever most suitable time. I know, I’ve been there myself. But even as I was collapsing in the evening after a fourteen-hour day, I had noticed that I could write well and relatively painlessly early at night, when the day’s noise had dissipated itself and only ideas and their executions mattered. As ever dear reader, it is a case of know thyself.
While Twyla Tharp is adamant about the advantages of building a creative habit, as I’ve already told you many times, I think that Dan Price is on to something when he says that a strict schedule is likely to be detrimental to a creative person. Ultimately, different approaches (or a combination of them) work in more or less effective ways for different people. When I discovered my magic hour, making a habit of writing became really easy.
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