March 2019
It’s five o’clock in the morning as I write this. The house is quiet. My youngest is upstairs, fast asleep. My oldest is in the family room with my wife, on the couch after getting into a fight with his bicycle on Thursday and breaking his elbow (the bike won). They’re both asleep, too. So I crept past them, careful not to wake either of them up.
I’ve forgotten what this feels like. The silence. The darkness. The world being asleep.
Except for me.
For over four years, I had a routine. I’d wake up every day at five and write my books. It took a while for the hard work to pay off. Just like an athlete who goes to the gym and trains so they can one day be good enough to play and make a difference at the big game, I, too was training… I was getting my reps in. I was showing up, so I could win.
But then I stopped.
Six months ago, almost to the day, is when I stopped, actually. I had just finished writing my latest thriller, readers were telling me it was the best story I’ve ever written, and I thought I deserved a little rest. I’d been going at this pace for a long time, after all.
So one month became two. Two became four. Time waits for no man, especially those with big dreams. I tried writing the sixth installment of my thriller series. I’d wake up at six, sometimes six-thirty. I’d squeeze ten or twenty minutes of writing in when I could. I’d look for tricks to improve my productivity. Dictation, music to help get into the ‘flow.’
But now, six months later, I realize the truth: there’s no substitution for hard work.
Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten that. I’d forgotten the secret to my success. And when I look to my left at my ‘Seinfeld calendar,’ as I call it, where I drew a big fat X over each day where I hit my word count, I realize I’ve been tracking the wrong thing.
Because the goal isn’t to write a certain number of words, regardless if they’re good or not. The goal isn’t to have a completed manuscript at the end of all this, written haphazardly in random pockets of time. That wouldn’t be fun to write or fun to read.
The goal’s to show up and follow a system that’s never failed me since I started all this. “You can’t control the outcome, but you can control the process,” someone once told me. “Don’t try and hit a home run. Just go out there and hit a single, every single day.”
Success requires sacrifice. Despite my hero I write about knowing this, somehow I forgot about it, too. It took six long months, but I think I finally get it now. My Xs on my calendar shouldn’t represent hitting a daily word count. They should represent keeping a promise I made to myself to wake up before the rest of the world and do what I love.
That leaves me with only one option, if I really want this: to recommit and begin again.
For those who are wondering, I’m close to halfway done on Blake Jordan #6 and just finished writing chapter 25 of 60. Thanks for all of your encouraging emails, I’m looking forward to getting back to my early morning routine to finish the story for you to enjoy.