Hundred

Writing · 100 days · Hundred

  1. What the hundred days look like
  2. A question before you start
  3. Join the next hundred days

Early hour · writing around a full-time job

Six in the morning is the only hour nobody else wants

Evenings belong to whatever the day left behind. The hour before work is the one slot that is genuinely yours, and it is also the one that costs an alarm, a dark kitchen and no witnesses. Early routines usually die in the second week for exactly that reason.

The alarm is negotiable and the office is not

why the early hour fails

One snooze carries no consequenceThat is the whole problem with it. The job has a start time and the manuscript does not.
A missed morning cannot be made upWhatever you promised yourself at six, the hour does not reappear at nine in the evening after a full working day.
Nobody sees the early hourColleagues see the job. The book written before it is invisible to everyone, including you on a bad week.

What a hundred early mornings look like

Mostly a sleep problem. The writing is the easy part next to the bedtime that has to move.

01

Three tasks in the morning, one report at night

how it runs

3 1 ∞ tasks, morning report, night people reading it
  1. 01 Set the three tasks before you need them The night before or at the desk. Waking up to a decision already made is most of the battle at that hour.
  2. 02 Report briefly in the evening What the hour produced, written when the workday has ended. Two lines is a full report.
  3. 03 Other early writers on the same clock Their logs land on the same days as yours, and a missing one is easy to notice.

the shape of it

What a hundred early mornings look like

entry 1

Mostly a sleep problem. The writing is the easy part next to the bedtime that has to move.

Day 1–14

Mostly a sleep problem. The writing is the easy part next to the bedtime that has to move.

Day 45

The hour becomes unremarkable, which is the state you were after in the first place.

Day 100

A hundred early mornings logged, around a full-time job that did not get any lighter.

Early writing hours already have a crowd

where this comes from

Writers' Hour from London Writers' Salon runs a free hour of writing four times every weekday, built around a fixed start time rather than a syllabus.

source
140,479

Shut Up & Write! lists this many members across 119 meetups, all of them on the same premise: a set hour, in company, free.

source

Numbers are quoted from the pages they link to. We publish none of our own.

before you sign up

Reasonable questions

Is there a call or a sprint at six?

No. Nothing is scheduled. The only fixed things are your morning list and the evening report.

Which time zone does the day end in?

Yours. The report closes your day, wherever you are.

What about weekends?

They count as days. Many people put the larger tasks there and keep weekdays small.

Can I write in the evening instead?

Yes. The structure does not care when the writing happens, only that the day gets reported.

Does it cost anything now?

No. This page only takes an email address.

A hundred mornings before the job starts

Leave an email and we will write when the next group opens. Nothing is charged here.

One email when the next group opens.

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Wondering whether it fits a stalled draft?

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