The Magic Hour
In film, the Magic Hour is that perfect moment after sunrise or before sunset when the sun’s rays peek over the horizon in just the right way, gracing the atmosphere with a haze of idyllic golden light.
The Magic Hour: Writing Version
In other words, the magic hour is a ideal hour where everything lines up correctly and the world looks its best.
In writing, I’m going to use this term in a different way.
Recently, I gave a talk about Creating a Writing Habit and I challenged everyone with this thought experiement:
If I gave you, right now, $150 in cash, with the only caveat being that you had to find an hour this week to spend that money on something for yourself, would you accept the money? One hour. Once during the week. All paid for. Get a massage. Go to dinner with a friend. Buy a new pair of shoes. Whatever you want. One hour for yourself.
Everyone would take that money. We’d find an hour. Maybe we’d eek it out of our work week or ask the spouse to put the kids to bed while we went out. Maybe we’d stop scrolling on our doomsday devices and find an hour within that normally wasted time. Some way, some how, if we received $150 to do it, we’d find the hour.
What’s This Have to Do With Writing?
Well, that hour is your writing hour. When you say, “I can’t find the time,” to write, remember that you’d find an hour for yourself if I paid you to do it. So, that hour exists and it exists for you to do something for YOU.
Again, that’s your writing time.
But, you say, I can’t find that hour every week!
Fine. Break it up into two half hours. Or, as I like to do, three twenty minute sprints. Even four fifteen minute sprints. Maybe you stay twenty minutes after work ends and write. Or you write in your car during your kid’s soccer practice. Or, you write before your partner gets home from work. If dinner has to be twenty minutes or a half hour late, so what? When your significant other gets home, hand them an apple. They’ll live.
I’ll Inconvenience My Family
Yeah, you might. But, I’m willing to bet you’ve bent over backwards to accommodate your family for a long time. They can bend a little. Your writing time is important. This is meaningful to you. Give yourself this time, and they’ll make it a priority as well.
Also read: The Beginning Writer’s Guide to Writing the Soggy Middle
