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# How I write: mornings, coffee and paper
- URL: https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/how-i-write-mornings-coffee-and-paper/
- Published: 2026-09-17T08:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T08:00:00.000Z
- Description: No secret, no trick: one protected hour, a notebook and a sentence left unfinished.
- Author: Julian Hart
- Tags: Ideas, #Import 2026-09-30 08:13

People often ask writers about their routines, as if there were a secret. I used to read every interview I could find, hoping for the trick. There is no trick. But there is a routine, and after fifteen years mine has settled into something simple enough to describe on one page.

![The desk faces the window, not the room.](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/write-window-1.jpg)

The desk faces the window, not the room.

## Six o'clock: coffee, then paper

I get up at six, before the house is awake. I make one cup of coffee, strong, in a small pot. I do not look at my phone. This is the most important rule, and the one I break most often. Once I have read one email, the day belongs to someone else.

I start on paper, not on a screen. A cheap notebook, a pen I like. For the first twenty minutes I write anything: a list of what I dreamed, a complaint about the weather, the sentence I could not get right yesterday. It is warming up, like a runner jogging before a race.

![Paper first: nothing on it has to be good.](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/write-notebook-1.jpg)

Paper first: nothing on it has to be good.

> The first pages are not for anyone. They are for getting the pipes to run clear.  
>  
> **a note in my notebook, 2019**

## Seven o'clock: the real work

By seven I move to the computer and work on whatever is due. I work in blocks of fifty minutes with a ten-minute break, which I spend walking around the garden or washing up. I do not listen to music with words. I do not open a browser unless I need to check a fact, and when I do, I write the fact on paper first so I do not wander.

| Time  | What I do           | Rule                        |
| ----- | ------------------- | --------------------------- |
| 06:00 | Coffee and paper    | No phone                    |
| 07:00 | First writing block | No browser                  |
| 08:00 | Second block        | Walk in the break           |
| 09:00 | Stop, breakfast     | Leave a sentence unfinished |

## Leave a sentence unfinished

I stop at nine, even when it is going well. Especially when it is going well. I stop in the middle of a sentence I know how to finish. The next morning, I do not have to face a blank page; I have half a sentence waiting for me, and finishing it pulls me straight back into the work. I learned this from an old interview with a novelist, and it is the single most useful habit I have.

![One cup, one pot, no second cup until nine.](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/write-coffee-1.jpg)

One cup, one pot, no second cup until nine.

## What about the rest of the day?

The afternoons are for everything else: email, editing, reading, errands, calls. I am not a precious person about the mornings, but I am protective. Three hours of real writing a day is enough to finish a book in a year. Most people who say they have no time to write have one hour they could protect. It is usually the first one.

![](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/write-typewriter-1.jpg)

![](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/coffee-desk-2.jpg)

![](https://marlowe.ghostcms.templates.codememory.com/content/images/2026/09/write-notebook-1.jpg)

My grandfather's typewriter (decoration only), the morning desk and the notebook stack.

## Reading as part of writing

The other half of my routine happens in the evening, and it is reading. Not reading for research, but reading for pleasure, with a pencil. I underline sentences I admire and write a small tick in the margin when a paragraph does something I want to learn: a clean transition, a surprising verb, a scene that ends one line earlier than I would have ended it.

Once a week I copy two or three of those sentences by hand into the back of my notebook. Copying slowly shows you how a sentence is built in a way that reading never does. You feel where the commas fall, where the weight sits, how short the short sentences are.

Many writers I admire say the same: you cannot write well without reading a lot, and you cannot read well without slowing down. The morning is for writing. The evening is for learning how.

💡

If you want to write more, do not start by writing more. Start by protecting one hour, at the same time every day, for two weeks. The writing follows the habit.

#### What if I am not a morning person?

Then protect a different hour. The time does not matter. The protection does.

#### Do you ever skip a day?

Of course. The routine is not a rule. It is the default I come back to.