Writing is Hell...Unless you wake up at 5 am
5 writing routine hacks for 2026
It is 4.57 am on January 2nd, 2026, and you are sitting at your newly-cleared desk in your room, refreshed by a glass of water, thinking about all the great writing you are going to do.
This house is so quiet you can hear the pipes chugging and the tinkle of decorations falling off the Christmas tree. The newly-arrived kitten that has tapped you awake periodically the past few nights is nowhere to be seen - banished to sleeping with the children. You hope she is okay in there.
You open your notebook to a crisp new page, pen at the ready,
and turn on your computer. Today is not an ordinary day. Today is the start of the rest of your life - excuse the drama. Today, you are setting an intention for your writing journey, the year to come. This morning, you don’t plan to write much. 150 new words will be lovely. The plan is mostly to refresh your memory of existing projects you haven’t looked at over the Christmas holiday and edit old words - turn them over like the slowly roasting parsnips and carrots you made for Christmas dinner, and at about 7 am, you will go have breakfast and be done with that. About 8 am, you will go for a walk, and then at 9 am, the rest of the day will begin, whatever that looks like. You end up writing well over a thousand words. Not bad considering this time yesterday you had just gotten to sleep after bouncing around your friend’s living room to soca music, extremely drunk, wearing a flashing Happy New Year necklace.
You will not wake up at 5 am every day this year. This is an 8-day challenge which will end on Jan 9th. Each morning of the challenge, you will post a little photo of your desk in your Instagram stories showing you are at work. It’s not about some macho Instagram stunt, but if writing is like a muscle, then train it like a gym bro - by showing up every day at the same time and writing until eventually, hopefully, writing feels easy, natural, daily. It doesn’t have to be 5 am. It can be 4 am. It can be 8 am. Ideally, writing should be the first thing you do each day to center it in your life and give it your best energy of the day. Brain power declines throughout the day as you get more tired. Toni Morrison famously got up at 4 am to write. However, it can be any time. I find 5 am is a good balance of painful and realistic. Painful because you’d rather not! It requires some sacrifice and intentionality. Realistic because if you normally wake up early anyway, it gives you at least a good, undisturbed hour, no matter what the day will bring.
And this, folks, is how you finish your novel, no matter what your commitments are, no matter if you have children or a full-time job, with routine. This is how I finished The Lagos Wife with two small kids during a pandemic when they were schooling from home, and I had not a minute to myself the entire day.
My hacks for a 5 am writing routine:
Go to bed early. If this sounds obvious in theory. It isn’t in practice. Waking up at 5 am begins with prepping for bed at 8 pm. If you’re not used to going to bed early (you want to be fast asleep by 10 pm at the latest), you may have to change things, plans, TV viewing, family responsibilities, switch off phones, etc. Get a book you’re looking forward to reading and hop into bed around 9 pm. I have a ye olde alarm clock now, so I don’t have to use my phone and possibly get sucked into last-minute doom scrolling or messaging answering.
Be accountable. Tell people you are waking up at 5 am to write. They will be inspired, and then you will feel like you can’t let them down with a sneaky day off. Post it online. Write it on the Post-it and stick it on something.
Plan. Decide what you will be working on the night before. You don’t want to waste this sacred hour dithering. Have something you want to jump into, or plan to prompt yourself into work. Or do the Morning Pages (The Artists’ Way). But don’t just turn on your computer and then sit there listening to your stomach growl for an hour.
Be ready. If you can’t work on an empty stomach, plan to wake up a few minutes earlier to prepare breakfast. If you need a shower, give yourself an extra fifteen minutes, but by 5 a.m., you MUST be at your desk. Phone away and desk cleared. The time can easily be frittered away doing other things if you are not careful.
Challenge yourself. Set yourself a clear number of days for this routine. It can be Mon-Fri or a 10-day writing challenge. A month. After that time, you can take a breather, be sociable, catch up on sleep, and reset your intention. Motivating yourself with some kind of possible reward or treat at the end can make it more fun.
Happy writing!
Oooh this is great, especially the five point checklist. No.3 is gold dust for me I think, deciding what to work on before sitting down to write. Thank you, and have a great week.
Thank you, NEEDED this. I have a newborn but determined to finish my first novel this year. Have been following you since I read Rude girls when I was 14!