A quiet hour before the house wakes

Everything true I have to say about routine is unglamorous, so here it is plainly. I write between half five and seven in the morning, four or five days a week, at the kitchen table, because that is the only hour of the day nobody else in this house wants.

I did not choose the hour for its poetry. I chose it because I tried every other one and they all had something in them already. Evenings had tiredness. Lunchtimes had the low hum of the afternoon coming. The morning hour was empty, and empty is the only requirement that has ever actually mattered.

Three things keep it alive, none of them inspiring:

The coffee is made the night before, so there is nothing between waking and sitting. The document is left open, mid-sentence, so there is no blank page to face at half five. And I stop while I still have something to say, which feels wasteful every single time and is the reason I can come back the next day without dread.

Stopping mid-thought is the closest thing to a trick I know. Tomorrow's fear is always about starting. If you never fully stopped, there is nothing to start.

Some mornings produce nothing. Perhaps one in four. I have made peace with that ratio by deciding that showing up is the unit, not output — the hour counts as done when it is spent, not when it is good. That sounds like a slogan. In practice it is the difference between a writing life and a series of writing incidents.

The house wakes around seven. I hear the floor upstairs, and the day arrives, and I close the laptop mid-sentence on purpose.