The “Golden Hour” is not my concept….I learned about the concept from science fiction writer Steven Barnes. But thegolden hour is something that every writer needs to carve out every day (if possible) and protect ruthlessly.
As William Goldman says in his book Which Lie Did I Tell:
You have to protect your writing time. Yo have to protect your writing time to the death.
A quick caveat before we begin: your golden hour doesn’t need to be an hour. It could be longer. Or shorter. It doesn’t need to be daily either. In the Goldman passage above, the talks about his Agent who took 8 years to write his novel because the only time available in his busy life to write was a couple of hours every Sunday morning.
So that was when he wrote.
And why he took 8 years to finish a novel.
So let’s dive in.
#1 What Is A Golden Hour?
A “Golden Hour” is simply this:
An hour where the ONLY activity you are going to do is writing. No email. No internet.
That’s it.
Just writing.
It reminds me of legendary copywriter’s method of working. Where he set a timer for 33 minutes and 33 seconds. And once it was ticking, the only thing he could do was sit at his desk and do nothing. Or pick up his pencil and start writing.
There’s another writer who has two computers. His writing computer has no internet on it. And only apps that support writing. So he’s running it like a glorified word processor. If you’re old enough to remember dedicated word processors….they were computers whose sole designed function was for secretaries to write and edit on, and print out from. And of course writers leapt on thise. I think Asimov was the first writer to publically talk about having a word processor.
Note that your ‘Golden Hour’ doesn’t have to be an hour. And doesn’t have to be daily. But ideally it’s daily. And ideally it’s long enough to support your writing goals. Commit to it, and let compound interest do the rest.
Talking of which…
#2 The Power Of A '“Golden Hour.'“
A while back, one of the issues of PTWS was about ‘Brandon Sanderson And The Maths Of Writing.’ (Normally I’d cross link - but I’m still in the process of porting back issues over to my deliberate-practice.com website. You don’t have to read that….but point is that if you want to write 100,000 words in the next year, you need to write around 275 words a day.
If you could up that to 500 words a day with your ‘Golden Hour,’ then your annual output goes up to 186,000 words. If you’re a fiction writer, that’s two novels a year. If you’re a non fiction writer that could be 10 ultra short books (15 to 20K long), or around three books the length of trad published books. Or anything in between.
To give you some clarity on what 500 words looks like….the two paragraphs above are around 140 words long. So you probably need to write 8 to 10 paragraphs to get to 500 words. Depending of course on your writing style.
If you can’t write 10 paragraphs a day….maybe you don’t want to be a writer. But you want to be someone who has written. If so, find a ghost writer and let them put your words on paper.
But.
If you CAN write 10 paragraphs a day. And you create a golden habit to get those paragraphs done. In 10 years time you’ll have accumulated nearly 2 million words.
Note: another way of getting your 500 words down would be to dictate them. Which only requires 10 to 15 minutes of ‘dead time’ to do so. See my book How To Write In Your Dead Time for more thoughts on that.
Note 2: most professional writers do more than 500 words a day. Stephen King does 1500 to 2000. Brandon Sanderson’s daily numbers are around 2500 words a day. Asimov wrote 4000 words a day.
500 words a day is a good starting point. When you’ve habitualized that….you can always scale up.
#3. How To Set Up Your Golden Hour
Things to take into account when setting up your Golden Hour:
Ideally, you’ll know when you’re most productive. For some writers it’s the morning. For some, it’s late evening. If you need to do trial and experimentation to find out which works best for you, do so. For me it’s the mornings.
You need to get into the habit of eliminating all distractions. That means smart phones (that make you dumb), Internet access, emails, family and friends. When you’re writing….you’re fucking writing. Make sure everyone knows that, and you only get disturbed if it’s serious.
Headphones and writing music help shut the world out and allow you to focus on your writing.
Always know what you’re going to work on. More on that below.
Have coffee/snacks/water/whatever you need to hand. Go to the toilet before your hour starts. And get started.
If you repeat this often enough, it will become habitual. But your Ego (aka Resistance) will try to fight you to start with. So every day you need habits in place to get you started and past any initial efforts that Resistance will throw up to derail you.
#4 Outwitting Resistance
Here are strategies you can use and adapt to suit your unique personality to outwit resistance and make your Golden Hour productive:
Never start with the blank page. Either have a sketch outline already prepared. Or be continuing from the previous day’s writing. In which case you can read the previous day writing, make corrections, and that will ground you in your current piece and start the creative cogs turning.
The extreme version of the last point: always finish a day’s writing with an uncompleted sentence. When you go through yesterday’s writings….your brain will pick at that uncompleted sentence and will want to finish it. Those first few words are often the hardest. Once you’ve got new words on the page….Resistance will realize this is not a big deal.
The best way to make sure you never sit down to a blank page and have something to work on before you put new words on the page: go for a 15 minute walk just after you wake up and dictate the first 300 to 500 words of your writing. Start your Golden Hour by importing that to your writing computer and then editing it. By the time you’ve edited it - for spelling, punctuation, meaning and lay out - your writing brain will be in motion.
Commit to a minimum word quote. Make a deal with Resistance: “Listen buddy, I only need 500 words this morning. And I’m sitting here until they’re done….the sooner we get them done, the sooner we can goof off.” If Resistance knows you’re serious…it will get out of the way and let you get them done. So it can goof off.
Ruthlessly protect your Golden Hour. Anyone who lives with you has to know that they can’t come and talk to you until you’ve taken your headphones off. Resistance will clutch at any straw to pull you away from your writing. So make sure your significant others know that for your Golden Hour - however long that is, can be more, can be less - that you’re not to be disturbed.
The extreme version of the last bullet: Isaac Asimov had the window in his New York flat that overlooked his writing table bricked up so he couldn’t look out.
That’s it.
Commit to your Golden Hour. Both in time, word count and number of sessions per week. Make it inviolate. And let the words start to stack up. Repeat that for a week and you’ve had a great writing week. Do it for four weeks….a great writing month. You can see where that sequence leads….keep doing it and you’ll look round in 10 years time and people will be saying: Wow, how did you write 2 million words.
The answer: the simple (but extraordinary) power of a Golden Hour.
The Ride Out
Over the last month or so I’ve been diving in to the work of Ray Bradbury. One of his best pieces of advice is (this is paraphrased):
“If (writing) is work….don’t do it. If you’re not enjoying it, stop and do something you do enjoy.”
If writing is not enjoyable for you, don’t do it. COmbine that enjoyment with a Golden Hour….and you’ll be…..golden.
Final word: last chance to get the ‘Short Book Strategy’ presentation is Wednesday. Grab a copy of my book Lessons On Writing From Ray Bradbury - either Kindle or Print - and send me the invoice. I’ll do the rest.
I like the idea of dictating a little bit before starting a writing session!