Arguably the greatest American novelist of all time, Toni Morrison, spent her morning hours putting words on a page. She wrote, “I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.” Now, I couldn’t tie Toni Morrison’s shoes on my best day. I probably couldn’t even stand in the same building as her. But on this, I fundamentally disagree.
I am not going to spend the following 792 words –– not that anyone’s counting –– refuting Morrison’s model of the writing process. Instead, I’ll just tell you what I did.
Last Friday, I wrote the 87,156th and final word of my first novel. And it was long after sunset. Morrison might have rolled her eyes, but to me, I had found the perfect moment.
It didn’t always feel that way.
I only really started enjoying writing after I hit 50,000 words. After the first 10,000, I fell out of love with it entirely, becoming so absorbed in reaching some magic number. When I finally did, I felt empty, having done months of work for what I perceived was naught.
I did the only logical thing left and stopped writing altogether.
My abandonment of the project was the culmination of a trying process: 1,000 words a day, at a minimum, 7,000 a week. I treated it like a checklist, transforming my work into a cold, mechanical assembly line. It didn’t breathe.
When I stopped writing, I didn’t step away completely. I kept reading, seeping in Morrison’s honesty, Didion’s detachment and McCarthy’s minimalism.
Perhaps most importantly, though, I read myself. I laughed at my own shitty writing, saw progress and felt what it was like to love words again. Suddenly, writing didn’t feel like a job.
When Morrison wrote, I slept. That was the difference. But each of us had a routine. Hers flourished in the soft glow of morning, mine in the orange embers of a sinking sun. Although diametrically opposed, we endured in our own ways, filling the pages not with words we were obligated to write, but ones we made our own.
Besides the multiple bestsellers, the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, we were the same. And the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Can’t forget about that one.
I couldn’t tell you about Morrison’s routine better than she could. I can only tell you mine. Every day, I wouldn’t touch my work until 5 p.m., until the sun had lowered in the sky and I could open my window shades without being effectively blinded.
Once the clock hit 5 p.m., though, the process began — controlled chaos, as my mother would say. I’d put on an 80s synthpop playlist — not the watered-down nonsense they label synth today –– start writing, get distracted, scroll Instagram, then do it all over again.
Eventually, I put time limits on Instagram, a devil that Morrison didn’t have to contend with until late in her career. That helped a lot.
After dinner, I’d head outside around 7:45. By this point, the concrete streets and glass windows of New York would be bathed in that orange glow I loved so much, and I’d make my way towards the water, music blasting in wired headphones.
Pier 26 turned into my office. Funnily enough, years earlier, I’d watched them build it up from the Hudson, sitting on the edge of Pier 25 with my sister and my dad, watching the sun come up. Back then, there was no pressure. It was just me, my thoughts and dirty water.
Things felt simpler there, more detached. As though people had come just to exist. There wasn’t much pressure to be anything other than myself.
In a way, coming there reminded me not to take myself too seriously, something I believe is integral to the writing process. I won’t lie and say I never checked the word count — I did, constantly — but I improved. Each night, as the sun sank into the Hudson, I’d leave with a sense of accomplishment, knowing I got a little closer to my goal, a bit better than I was yesterday.
Most importantly, at a time I felt the most defeated, I began to write the most. The simple action of creating a routine helped save my novel, teaching me how to love the process. I began hitting 2,000 words daily, far surpassing the 7,000-word weekly goal that once haunted me.
It wasn’t a job anymore. I was reclaiming something I loved. More importantly, I reclaimed a love for my novel and writing again.
Writing isn’t simply about finishing a draft, seeing your book appear on shelves or making your first sale. Writing isn’t even about finishing. You write because YOU want to read it. Because, despite the struggles and frustration, it makes YOU happy.
McCarthy wrote, “I’m not writing for a particular audience. The reader in mind is me.” You should, too, because in the end, the most valuable opinion is your own.
Otto Fritton PZ ’27 is an avid Peanuts fan. He finds Charles M. Schulz’s portrayal of Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl fantastic; the perfect example of unrequited love. He wonders if Charlie will ever truly succeed, and suspects that’s exactly the point.
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