Instead of getting up at 7:00 with my husband, I started my day a few minutes earlier. Then I started getting up at 6:00, then 5:00 and finally 4:00. Our fourteen-year-old cat became my alarm clock as she grew accustomed to the earlier feedings. Her meow let me know if I were even a few minutes late.
I could hear the sounds of the house as I sat at the table in the kitchen sipping tea and writing for at least twenty minutes. I listened closely to the rhythm of the second hand on the clock and the gurgling sounds of the refrigerator.
I came to love these early morning hours. I found I was my best self in the morning. That special story changed my lifestyle permanently.
I signed up to take piano lessons. With the aid of my headphones plugged into the keyboard, I started practicing my music during these early morning hours without waking my husband. I found I was more alert then and could concentrate better. In the same manner, I listened to my favorite singers, playing a favorite song three times in a row with no one to get tired of hearing it. I exercised with a DVD, and it gave me energy to tackle my chores all day long. I attended writing seminars and took an online writing course, and recently I had the honor of publishing two stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul books.
As the morning wore on and the dawn came, I observed the birds at the feeder on the deck and learned to identify them by name. For the first time, I looked through my kitchen window to see a downy woodpecker with the rising sun as a backdrop. I wondered if heaven could be more beautiful. As Terri Guillemets says, “I used to love night best, but the older I get the more treasures and hopes and joys I find in mornings.”
One morning my husband greeted me with “What are you doing up so early this morning?” as he poured his first cup of coffee. It was 7:30.
“I am well into my day,” I answered as I rattled off a few of my activities. He didn’t know I had tiptoed out of bed in order not to disturb him and started my day three hours earlier.
“When you finish your coffee, let’s go out and smell the dawn,” I told him.
His eyebrows furrowed as he said, “How can you be so cheerful at this hour?”
I forgot about our encounter until a few weeks later when my husband came to the kitchen smiling and said to me, “Do you still want to walk? I haven’t smelled the dawn since I was a young boy.”
I relaxed, as I had already done my routine chores for the day. We walked out into the early morning sunlight hand in hand. I knew I had no worries about boredom.
~Janet N. Miracle
Confessions of a Morning Person
I love the sweet smell of dawn — our unique daily opportunity to smell time, to smell opportunity — each morning being, a new beginning.
~Emme Woodhull-Bäche
It happened again today. I found myself apologizing to someone for being too perky in the morning. It wasn’t even that early. I called a client at 9:00 a.m. — after watching the clock until precisely 8:59 and 59 seconds, which I figured was late enough to make a business call. I jumped into the conversation with a bit too much enthusiasm, I suppose, because my client responded with, “Whoa, you are WAY too awake for this time of morning.”
I didn’t tell her I’d been up for five hours and had already run two miles, answered a bunch of e-mail, studied my Bible, got four kids up, fed, dressed and off to school, done a batch of wash and weeded my herb garden. I especially didn’t tell her I got up that early because I wanted to.
That hasn’t always been the case. Motherhood did this to me. When my husband and I were first married, he was much more coherent in the wee hours. I’d force myself out of bed after the fifth assault of the alarm clock and relocate to the cold, hard bathroom floor desperate for a few seconds more sleep but knowing I’d be miserable enough on the floor to relent and stagger toward the shower.
Then we brought home that first little squalling bundle and my sleep habits were rearranged. We’d wanted a baby for so long that each time I heard the glorious sound of Haley O’Hara crying for another feeding, I was determined to respond with an eager, happy face no matter how sleep deprived I was.
I never wanted her or the three babies who followed to feel that they were disturbing me or were a burden at whatever hour they decided was morning. I determined I’d be 100% Mom as soon as they called me into action.
But the real metamorphosis didn’t occur until I stumbled upon a secret.
Because I was lucky enough to make raising my kids a full-time gig, our routine tended to be pretty loosey goosey. We got up when we felt like it (okay, when they felt like it) and went to bed when we were tired of being awake.
We woke up together. We went to bed together. We grocery-shopped, ran errands, ate, played and bathed together. We did everything together. Life was grand.
Then one day I realized that if I could only make myself get up an hour before my kids, I could have sixty minutes alone in my own home — something I hadn’t experienced in years.
The first day was intoxicating. I could serve myself a cup of coffee and drink it while it was still hot. I could write a letter and keep my mind on what I wanted to say. Most of my letters at that time consisted of disconnected thoughts written with two or three different pens whenever I could grab a minute, usually perched on the edge of the sandbox or sitting on the floor beside the bathtub where the kids were temporarily distracted by bubbles.
But in my stolen hour, I could read a book, exercise, listen to grown-up music and eat a leisurely breakfast. I could coax one of the cats to snuggle in my lap rather than hunker by the food bowl with one eye on whichever preschooler might decide he’d enjoy some dress-up clothes.
Even if I used my time to do laundry or wash dishes, it felt indulgent to be doing it in complete solitude. I could begin a task and see it through to completion without stopping and starting it fifteen times. I could sneak in a bath all by myself without an audience or running commentary. I bought myself grown-up bath products and adult breakfast foods — aromatherapy and English muffins, hot oil treatments and lemon curd.
I had no idea how starved I’d become for my own company and quickly honed skills that will serve me well if I ever decide to become a cat burglar. I can do anything soundlessly if it means I get to do it alone. Of course, before long, an hour wasn’t enough, so I got up two hours earlier, then three and sometimes four.
More than a decade has passed since that epiphany. The kids are teenagers now and having their own morning wrangle with the snooze alarm. But I’ve kept my early hours to myself. I’ve changed my title from stay-at-home mom to work-at-home mom (from SAHM to WAHM) but that first hour or two of the morning is still my favorite time. Most days I accomplish more between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. — when the kids wake up to sing a few bars of Mom, I need . . . Mom, I want . . . and Mom, I gotta have . . . — than I do between 6:00 and bedtime.
Even though they’re taller than I am, I still like the idea of my kids waking up to a pleasant mama. And after a brisk run with the dogs, some quality time with the cats, my daily Bible study, a little e-mail interaction and as much coffee as I care to drink, I’m far more chipper than my husband or kids — or my clients — would like me to be.
So that’s it. That’s my dirty little secret. I get up early and I like it. Besides if I ever consider a career change, I’d make one heck of a good cat burglar.
~Mimi Greenwood Knight
Redemption of a Hack
Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny.
~Carl Schurz
Somewhere during journalism school many years ago, it was drilled into my mind that journalists were the moral watch-dogs of society. They wrote the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, regardless of social or political pressure. The world had the right to know the truth and journalists were the only trustworthy professionals who would deliver it. With ideals such as these, we aspiring
journalists yearned for those big headlines and bylines that would change the world.
I once dreamed of being a foreign correspondent. I would be multilingual, travel the world and write about gripping human stories that inspired global change. My work would appear in Time magazine and National Geographic. But that was many years ago, and sometime during my life, the line between journalistic integrity and commercialism blurred. It was probably during the same time that I got married and had children with chronic medical conditions. There was a fork in my road, and I chose my children — with no regrets.
The effect on my writing was clear. With less time or energy for research, reading and practice, my writing never improved and was marginal at best. Hard news stories were replaced by easy-to-spit-out features, essays, one-shots, fillers and whatever would sell to the local newspapers. Nothing newsworthy. Fluff, it was called in newspaper lingo, and I wrote it. I even wrote those dreaded advertorials which are advertising pieces masked as real news content. I had become the most disrespected type of writer: a hack. Webster’s Dictionary defines a hack as “one who produces banal and mediocre work in the hope of gaining commercial success in the arts.”
So there I was, feeling demoralized and ashamed of what I had become: a dishonorable, talentless writer with the irrepressible desire to keep writing. Maybe I should, as Stephen King wrote in his On Writing book, do us all a favor and pick up another hobby. But suppressing the urge to communicate is like trying to stop the flow of a mountain spring, or in my case, an old hose with an irreparable leak.
And then I read Ava Pennington’s “Writing My Story” in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for the Young at Heart. Her second life ambition to write made me realize that it wasn’t too late for me to realize my own writing dreams. In her words, rejection felt “as if I had shown my baby to people who said, ‘Boy, is she ugly!’ ” and that was exactly how I felt, too. I knew then that all writers are kindred souls, afraid to present their babies for society’s approval. My pieces were my babies. I loved them regardless of how anyone might pass judgment. Like Ava, I had written short stories, a novel, and children’s stories that were precious to me; but unlike Ava, I was a negligent mother who failed to nurture her work and let it go forth into the world.
Ava’s efforts humbled me. For years, she braved those rejection letters while I, after getting one, would stuff my manuscript into a drawer and sulk. I was a whining writing wimp (with a deplorable penchant for alliteration, I might add). I felt ashamed again, not because I had “sold out” to commercialism, but because I missed the point of written expression entirely.
Yes, there is an art to expressing yourself on paper. It doesn’t have to win a Pulitzer or Nobel Peace Prize to have merit. The joy and reward is in the writing, and if there is just one reader who might give his time to reading your work, count yourself worthy of writing. If you can help one reader learn something or better yet, feel something, you have done no small thing.
Ava’s publishing success was the natural outcome of her unbridled persistence and passion. That is what I had left behind a long time ago. Persistence and passion. There were still truths to be revealed through my writing. Ava’s piece reminded me that everyone is a story. There are lives and stories to be told, and I need not be a foreign correspondent to write a story that can change the world.
Ava’s story changed mine. She gave me the courage to resurrect my babies, dust them off and send them out with pride and positive expectations. It might not be a story about war and famine that touches my readers, but the simple, everyday stories about my own life. That is all I have to offer, and people seem to like those best.
I credit Ava’s story for returning me to the writing world a bit braver and nobler. For persistence and passion turned a hack into a writer once again.
~Lori Phillips
Writing My Story
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
~Sylvia Plath
I opened the local newspaper, eagerly searching the pages. Did they publish my tribute to my mother? They did! The article was the first thing I had ever published. I wasn’t paid for the work, since it was featured in a weekly human interest column. Still, it was encouraging to realize someone thought enough of my writing to publish it for public consumption.
Work, family, and a mortgage crowded out any further thoughts of writing. After completing an MBA degree, I enjoyed a twenty-year career as a Human Resources Director for multinational financial services firms. Although I worked on Wall Street in New York City, global responsibilities enabled me to travel across North and South America and even to Europe.
One of my coworkers had a dream of her own. She was in the middle of writing the “Great American Novel.” As we worked together over a period of several years, she would write a chapter and I would provide feedback. Her book was good, and against all odds for an unknown author, it was represented by the first agent she contacted and published by a major New York publisher.
Holding her book in my hand was almost as encouraging for me as it was for her. It validated her effort to follow her dream, and it gave me hope for my dream, too. She honored me by including my name in the book’s acknowledgments as one who encouraged her not to give up during the long, and frequently lonely, process of birthing her book.
It was about this time that my husband retired and I left the corporate world. We relocated to another state to begin the second half of our lives. It was finally time for me to start writing. But what to write?
I noticed a small newspaper article announcing that the famous Chicken Soup for the Soul series was inviting submissions for its upcoming book, Chicken Soup for the Working Woman’s Soul. Perfect!
I put pen to paper, or more accurately, fingers to keyboard. I wrote about an experience that happened to me during a morning commute, and submitted “Not Just Another Rat.” Of course, I thought they would immediately agree that it was an enthralling and wonderfully written story. I eagerly and naively awaited the letter notifying me of its acceptance for publication.
I waited and waited and waited . . . for more than a year! I later learned that more than 5,000 submissions were received from all over the world, but my story was chosen!
Wow, I thought, this writing stuff isn’t so hard. My friend was published on her first try. My first newspaper article was published. My first anthology submission was published. Maybe all those horror stories about how difficult it is to get published were nothing more than just stories. After all, my experience proved otherwise. Surely an agent or editor would soon recognize the quality of my writing and offer me a book contract.
After I finished patting myself on the back and celebrating publication of my story, I continued to submit short stories to anthologies. No takers. I wrote an inspirational non-fiction book and submitted it to agents and publishers. No interest. I wrote a novel. No interest in that one, either.
In fact, no one was interested in my work for the next two years. The rejection letters kept on coming. It was a discouraging cycle: write, submit, rejection, write, submit, rejection. Or write, submit, then silence. I’m not sure what was worse: rejections or silence. At least with the rejections, I knew where I stood!
I had two choices. I could turn off my computer and quit, or I could grow a thick skin and keep trying despite the painful rejections. Each one felt as if I had shown my new baby to people who said, “Boy, is she ugly!”
One thing that kept me going was learning the history of Chicken Soup for the Soul. The first book in the series was published in 1993 after being rejected more than 100 times. That book went on to sell more than eight million copies and the series is one of the most successful in publishing history.
So I kept plugging away. I joined a writers’ critique group and began attending writers’ conferences. I had much to learn about writing and publishing. I began writing arti
cles for magazines and continued to submit short stories to Chicken Soup for the Soul and other anthology publishers.
Then, in 2005, I submitted to Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul: Daily Inspirations. I sent in six submissions and three were chosen for publication. A few weeks later I was notified that the Chicken Soup for the Soul Healthy Living series would include a piece I had written on diabetes. By the third Chicken Soup for the Soul book, I went from wishing someone would publish me to wishing someone else would publish me! My husband put it in perspective when he reminded me of the days when I would have been thrilled if anyone published me!
Since 2003, I have been published in twenty anthologies, including fourteen Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Additionally, I have published more than thirty magazine articles with more submissions in the pipeline.
Best of all, I published my first solo book in 2010 with a traditional publisher, and I’ve co-authored two children’s picture books published by another traditional publisher in 2011!
My corporate career was successful, but I’m having much more fun following my dream. My desire is to use my writing, both fiction and non-fiction, to encourage others. That’s my passion. I refuse to be discouraged by obstacles, rejections, or the naysayers who told me I was too old to start a second career. The publication of my story in Chicken Soup for the Working Woman’s Soul encouraged me to keep persevering, to continue networking with other writers, and to continue learning as much as I could about the publishing industry.
Overnight successes in publishing are rare. For me, the path to success consisted of a series of small steps: membership in writers’ groups, attendance at writers’ conferences, writing magazine articles and short stories, co-authoring a children’s book, and finally, authoring my own book. In the process, I’m becoming a better writer as I find the lessons — and the humor — in daily life.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Reader's Choice 20th Anniversary Edition Page 16
