There is something magical about getting up stupidly early in the morning to get on with writing a book that would otherwise still be half-finished in a couple of weeks, at deadline time. The world is still, everyone else is asleep, but, outside, it still looks like daytime. Lately, sunlight has been pouring in, as I sit at the kitchen table with my coffee close to hand and apply myself to the task of getting the hell on with it.
It is much easier to concentrate at that time, because there is no point whatsoever in getting up before 5 only to be distracted by things on the internet, or by idly wondering what’s for breakfast. I know that time is short, that my children will be bumbling sleepily down the stairs in a couple of hours. It is my favourite time of the day, by far, for writing. Anything seems possible.
The downside, of course, is that I feel it’s bedtime by about 3 o’clock, and I am good for nothing at all in the evening. Occasionally when I’m out and about, I catch a glimpse of some poor woman with jowly eyes and bizarre blotchy skin, before realising that it’s a shop window or a mirror. And, to top it all off, I am the proud owner of a caffeine twitch which (unless everyone is kindly lying to me) is invisible to the outside world.
All the same, for the next few weeks, this is my life and I am strangely enjoying it, but only because it’s adrenaline-charged by pure panic. When it’s finished I will be back to 7 o’clock starts, which will be a luxury. I wish I could send a postcard back through time to my decade-ago self announcing that there would come a time when 7am would be classified as a lie-in. On balance, though, it’s probably best that I can’t.
