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– Welcome my friends
– Lets make this another action Friday
– My action for you today is one word
– START
– And I have

I. Toni Morrison, a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning writer, passed away this week at the age of 88. In memory of her, I wanted to share an except from an interview with her that I read in the Paris Review

TONI MORRISON
Writing before dawn began as a necessity—I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, Mama—and that was always around five in the morning. Many years later, after I stopped working at Random House, I just stayed at home for a couple of years. I discovered things about myself I had never thought about before. At first I didn’t know when I wanted to eat, because I had always eaten when it was lunchtime or dinnertime or breakfast time. Work and the children had driven all of my habits . . . I didn’t know the weekday sounds of my own house; it all made me feel a little giddy.
I was involved in writing Beloved at that time—this was in 1983—and eventually I realized that I was clearer-headed, more confident and generally more intelligent in the morning. The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.
Recently I was talking to a writer who described something she did whenever she moved to her writing table. I don’t remember exactly what the gesture was—there is something on her desk that she touches before she hits the computer keyboard—but we began to talk about little rituals that one goes through before beginning to write. I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. And she said, Well, that’s a ritual. And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular . . . Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.
I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?

Source: Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134

2.
I am currently reading a book that has been on my reading list for a long time
Anne Lamott – Bird By Bird
Some instructions on writing and life
And I want to read you an excerpt from this book

2 exemplary writers motivate us to START
Toni Morrison shares her morning routine
Anne Lamott encourages us to just get going
The advice is simple
Whatever your goal is
Make the space and the time for it and then begin
Stop putting off what you are capable of doing now
Don’t wait for better times, more convenient circumstances or more clarity
Just begin with what you have
Make your terrible first effort and then go from there

Much love