Jennifer M. Baldwin

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The “Morning Routine” is cliche at this point, but it still works

April 3, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I hesitate to write about morning routines because I feel like at this point, all the gurus have spoken (often annoyingly), it’s gotten cliche to spout off about how important one’s morning routine is, and we’ve heard the advice ad nauseam so what more is there to say?

And yet, I have been thinking once again about why I’ve been floundering since mid-December, and the answer is crystal clear: It’s my faltering morning routine.

From early August until the end of November, my morning routine had been relatively steady (I even managed a modified version of it while visiting family over the Thanksgiving holiday), and even though my writing output wasn’t huge in that span, I was writing consistently and enjoyably. Life was in balance.

Then December hit, Christmas prepping and end-of-semester-grading took over my life, and the morning routine was decimated. I tried to get back on track in January, but to no avail. I couldn’t get to bed on time, and in the morning, sleep felt more important than writing, so I would snooze until it was time to get my kids ready for school.

And now, here I am in April, and I’m grumbling about how out of sync I feel, how paltry my creative output has been, and how, frankly, depressed I’m getting.

It’s the lack of a morning routine!

I’ve known it the whole time, but for some reason I had convinced myself that perhaps my life was too unpredictable to commit to a regular morning routine and I’d be better off sneaking my writing in whenever I could, doing my art whenever the small snatches of time presented themselves. Planning didn’t seem to be working, so I would be more spontaneous.

But spontaneous is just another word for not getting shit done. Without a rhythm, without a routine, I never was able to find those snatches of time. My output nosedived.

Here’s the thing: it wasn’t that planning didn’t work. It was that I had given up on committing to the plan. I wanted my sleep (I still do, of course). And I figured it was too hard to get to bed at 10:00 p.m. My life wouldn’t let me. I had to face reality. Blah, blah, blah.

But what I was facing wasn’t reality. It was my own resignation in the face of a challenge. I had given up and soothed myself by saying it was pragmatism.

It wasn’t pragmatism. It was a reluctance to make changes. To turn off the screens and go to bed even if there were other things I wanted to do. The real reality is that we have to make choices, and from December to April, I had been making the choice to stay up later and not wake up early to do my morning routine. This was a choice I was making. I didn’t have to read one more online article after 9:00 p.m., but I did. I didn’t have to watch a second episode of that TV show, but I did. I didn’t have to put off my paper-grading all day so that I had a stack of them to grade at night, but I did.

These were choices. They still are choices I must face each and every day. But if I want to establish my morning routine again, then I must make different choices. Some things, yes, are always out of our control. I can’t control when my child has a nightmare and needs me to sit with him in his bedroom. I can’t control those nights when we get home late from visiting family and I have to stay up late to make the lunches and wash dishes.

But on typical nights, those normal nights when I have more control over my choices and time, I can start making the choice for the morning routine — the routine that gives my life balance and structure and health — over the choice for one more episode, one more article, one more paper to grade.

If it’s at all interesting to others, my morning routine consists of waking up at 6:00 a.m. and immediately doing stretches in bed to help with my back problems and muscle stiffness. Then I get up, drink a glass of water and take vitamins, and then begin walking around the house for exercise. While I walk, I usually pray. If it’s light enough outside, I might walk outside, but usually it’s too dark for that.

After my walk and prayer time, I do my Julia Cameron-style morning pages in my notebook, and then I do some creative writing, either fiction or nonfiction or poetry, whatever feels right and I’m most excited about.

By this time, I have to get ready for work, so I shower, pack the kids’ lunches, eat breakfast, and head to work with enough time to grade papers for thirty minutes before my first class period starts.

This is the ideal morning routine for me. In this three-hour span, I’m able to exercise, pray, reflect, write creatively, eat breakfast, and make progress on my teaching job, so that by 9:00 a.m., I have accomplished all the important things I need to accomplish for the day related to my health, my spiritual life, my art, and my job.

After 9:00 a.m., if I’ve done my morning routine, whatever else gets accomplished throughout the day, I can feel good knowing I did the things I needed to do to make myself feel whole.

Maybe some of the gurus would say my routine is too ambitious, and that’s why I fell off the wagon.

Maybe.

But over the years, I’ve trained myself to become more and more of a morning person, and as I get older, I know that by the time the afternoon hits, I’m too tired both physically and mentally to be effective at my creative work. The best time for me is the morning. Before the day has had a chance to drain me. So I need to get several things done in the morning because my health, my spiritual life, my art, and my job are all things I need to keep in balance for an ordered, satisfying life.

And if that means I need to wake up at 5:30 a.m. and go to bed at 9:30 p.m., then maybe I need to start making the choices that will allow me to do that. But it all comes down to choices, to what I value, and where I focus my time.

Not everything is under my control. Life will have bumps and setbacks.

But the morning routine — for me, at least — really does work as a tool and structure for making my art. I’ve noticed a huge plummet of happiness and artistic fulfillment since I floundered in my morning routine. And in just the past two days, since I’ve been trying to reestablish that routine, I’ve noticed a huge upswing in my mood and ability to get creative work done.

Reminding myself that the morning routine really does work, and that it’s worth making different choices at night, may be cliche to write about, but I wouldn’t have had the energy or time to write this blog post without my morning routine.

I’ll take the cliche every time if it means I get to make my art again and keep myself whole.

Creative Writing: Week One

March 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I’m teaching a Creative Writing class for the first time in several years, and this week was our first week. I’ve got fourteen students — high school kids — and we started the week watching a movie, coloring, and eating candy (an idea I blatantly stole from Lynda Barry... sorry for being a thief, Professor Lynda!).

It was great, though. Super chill. Fun and relaxing. A big part of this class is about having fun and being playful, so watching a movie and coloring felt very playful and kid-like. These are teenagers, so sometimes they want to act grown-up and mature and be sophisticated adults, but there’s also this yearning for childhood and play and fun (something often sorely missing from their busy, over-stuffed lives), so by giving them permission to have fun, to be a kid again, to be silly and do something “just because,” I’ve (hopefully) given them permission to also be creative.

We talked a bit about what it means to be creative, and my biggest message on this is that creative means “to create,” so any time they are making something, they are being creative. Doesn’t have to be “original” or “special” or even “good.” Just has to be making something.

What that something is, I’m leaving up to them.

(One student asked if she could make jam every week, and I said, “Um… okay? But maybe write, like, a poem and stick it on the label?” It is a creative WRITING class after all; I feel like some writing should be in there somewhere…)

We also spent some time decorating our writing notebooks and choosing “guardian spirits” (via Austin Kleon), and I told them they had to do some “input” every day and that a big chunk of their grade will be based on how much input they take in week after week.

Input includes reading poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays, comics, watching movies/TV, listening to music, looking at art, and having new experiences. When I told them they had permission to watch a bunch of movies this week and count it as their “homework” for my class, they all got very excited and couldn’t believe their luck. I also got very excited. I can’t wait for them to spend their week watching movies and getting ideas and having fun.

I’m very big on fun these days. We take things too seriously, acting as if writing stories or reading books or making art is some kind of excruciating task that tortures us. If reading a book is torture, you’re doing it wrong. And if writing something that came out of your imagination is laborious and unfun, then also: doing it wrong. This is art, kiddos. Not work.

So, we spent some time talking about how to have fun, and then I tried to do things all week that were fun. We went on walks. We listened to Japanese soul music from the 1970s. We made blackout poetry. We spent an entire class period inputting things into our brains: some students watched a movie, others read novels and poetry. I too read a book during that time, and listened to some synthwave music.

Their assignment this weekend is to keep doing their input, everyday. I’ll check their input logs on Monday.

I also asked them to spend thirty minutes to an hour doing some idea-generating. I gave them a list of twenty different activities to try, including playing the “What If?” game, making a list of titles, and listening to music to see what images and ideas flow from the songs.

In some ways, you could look at this first week and say, “She didn’t teach them anything! They just goofed around!”

And you’d be right. We did goof around. We did silly things. Playful things. Fun things. I gave them some advice about writing, but mostly, we just played. Because if they’re going to be writing creatively, they must first be playful. They must first be given permission to have fun. It’s a permission they were craving.

This first week was the giving-permission week: “Yes, you can play. Yes, you can laugh. Yes, you can make jam.” (Just maybe make a poem or a clever line to go with it.)

Going forward, we’ll learn some craft; we’ll learn techniques. I’ll give them prompts and exercises. But I’ll also continue to give them space and time and permission to have fun.

Note to Self: Stop Making This Mistake!

March 23, 2024 / / 1 Comment

I’m in the midst of correcting a mistake.

The mistake was beginning a novel, writing about nine chapters, and not outlining the major plot points, character details, and world-building information of each chapter as I finished it (which is a thing I do: I outline after I write, not before).

Instead, I wrote, wrote, wrote, my hair on fire, my fingers flashing, and I just kept chugging along, oblivious to my fatal error until I’d written 25,000 words and I was like, “Oh, fuck.”

I am a “discovery writer” or a writer who writes “into the dark,” so I do not outline beforehand. Instead — ideally — what I’m supposed to do is outline AFTER I’ve written each chapter, so I have a running summary of what’s happening as the story progresses and therefore I can keep track of all the details without having to use my critical voice to plan things beforehand.

Ideally.

Because what ends up happening — seemingly every time I start a new book — is I forget to do the outlining after I finish a chapter. And then about a third of the way through the book, I realize my mistake and have to spend days/weeks going back through and rereading my manuscript and taking notes. It really puts a halt to the creative energy and stalls the progress of the story. But it’s kinda necessary, otherwise I’ll forget key details and get all messed up with the continuity of the story.

So back into the manuscript I must go. Rereading and taking notes.

That’s where I’m at right now. I started writing Norse City Limits several months ago, and I was on a real roll — letting loose and getting the story down with energy and excitement — and then I realized I hadn’t been outlining after each chapter, and it was an emergency, screeching-of-the-breaks moment, quick-grab-the-notebook-and-start-outling, and now, it’s March, and I’m still not back to writing. I’m still outlining.

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I need to put a sticky note somewhere to remind me to STOP FORGETTING TO THE DO THE POST-WRITING OUTLINE!!111!12121!

This is not the first time such an error has happened; you’d think I would have learned my lesson, but apparently not. It’s kinda good that I’m so caught up in writing the story and finding out what happens next that I forget to do the “housekeeping” side of things afterward, but man, it is not good when I have to go back and do all this rereading and it just kills the momentum of the story.

I’d like to say, “Live and learn,” but apparently, I don’t learn? I just keep doing the same stupid mistake book after book.

So that’s where I’m at. Fixing my stupid mistake and trying to get back into the story so I can start writing it again.

Ugh.

Why Castles and Knights and Dragons? Beats me.

February 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Recently, a student asked why I like the Middle Ages so much.

This was in a short fiction elective, and we’d been reading lots of genres, some sci-fi, some fantasy, some realistic, some fairy tale-ish, some Southern Gothic, some suspense. During one of our discussions, we somehow came around to my particular tastes as a reader, and I said that I’ve always been drawn to stories about the past, particularly the medieval period in world history, and one student spoke up, a bit bemused, asking why.

“Because for as long as I can remember, I’ve like that era,” was what I said, which isn’t a good answer.

Why do you like something?

Well, because I always have.

Not a good answer. Circular reasoning. But I didn’t have any answer to give. Why did my tastes develop the way they did? Was it the media I consumed as a young child that influenced me? Was it something genetic, something intrinsic to my personality?

I honestly don’t know. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to stories with knights and castles and forests and monsters. Sometimes those stories were older than medieval (Greek myths preoccupied a lot of my late-elementary years), sometimes they weren’t medieval at all (I had quite an obsession with both Oz and Candyland as a wee youngster), but even if I strayed at times from Ye Olde Medieval Times, I always returned to knights and castles and forests and monsters eventually.

It might have been the media I consumed, the stuff floating in the air. The 1980s were a time when medieval fantasy was emerging as viable mass entertainment: the Conan movies, Red Sonja, Dungeons & Dragons, Legend of Zelda, etc.

As a kid, I was devoted to shows like The Gummi Bears, and to movies like The Princess Bride and Labyrinth (neither of which is strictly “medieval,” but they’ve got some of the trappings, i.e.: castles, goblins, sword fights, kingdoms), and when Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves came out, I was ALL IN. I had the action figures, the soundtrack, and the ticket stubs to show my devotion.

I also had books, like Rosemary Suttcliffe’s Arthurian novels for young readers. And the Endless Quest D&D books. And Narnia. And The Hobbit. And the Prydain Chronicles.

Going to my first Renaissance Festival as an eight-year-old cemented this obsession. Once you’ve wielded a wooden sword from the Renaissance Festival, there’s no going back.

Basically, there was a lot of medieval-ish stuff in the world for kids in the eighties and early nineties. I was exposed to a lot of it, and I loved it.

But why did I love it? That’s the thing I can’t explain. Not every child who grew up in America back then ended up loving the Middle Ages. Not every child who traipsed around the local Ren Fest ended up loving the Middle Ages. Not every kid who saw Conan grew up to be obsessed with sword and sorcery, and not every pre-teen who watched Kevin Costner shoot a bow and arrow ended up loving the Middle Ages as much as me.

What gives?

I didn’t have a good answer for my student, and I still don’t. She made it quite clear that she finds all this medieval stuff to be boring as hell, and I told her that’s great. Different strokes for different folks. The world would be boring if we all liked the exact same thing all the time.

But why do we like what we like? How much is driven by innate personality and how much is driven by outside influence? Nature vs. nurture, etc.

I can try to explain why I love the Middle Ages to my student, why I’m drawn to it, but those explanations won’t really have an impact on her. She’s not interested (nor does she need to be), and my enthusiasm won’t make her enthused, no matter how passionate my defense.

I do think it’s interesting that she was so curious to know. My love of the Middle Ages was so foreign to her experience that she was driven to seek an answer, to get an explanation. For her, my love of the medieval period was as strange as my love for black coffee. She was mystified by my tastes, as I often am by people who take an interest in Real Housewives or eat Velveeta cheese.

But that’s just it. Taste is taste. We can’t explain it, not fully. We can hunt for past experiences, for childhood affinities, for memories and upbringing to explain it, but when it comes to it, our tastes are what they are, and it’s no use arguing someone out of their tastes nor for arguing someone into your tastes.

We can share. We can gush and be enthusiastic, and maybe that will get others curious, maybe help them explore something unfamiliar and strange. Who knows, maybe several years from now, this same student will remember my passion for the Middle Ages and become curious enough to read the Brother Cadfael Chronicles, or The Once and Future King, or Beowulf, or whatever.

Or not.

There’s no explanation for taste. It’s a kind of alchemy, but it’s also a kind of magic. The spell either works or it doesn’t.

Or maybe, eventually, it does. When we least expect it. The heart wants what the heart wants.

And my heart — now and then and hopefully always — wants castles and knights and swords and dragons.

Don’t Call It a Resolution

January 4, 2024 / / 1 Comment

I’m hoping to blog more in 2024. I have an idea for a series of posts about board games, and since this term I’m teaching British Lit, Short Fiction (which will mostly entail reading short SFF stories with my students), and Creative Writing, I figure I’ll have a few things to say about writing, literature, and the fantastical as it pertains to my work in the classroom.

For Brit Lit this semester, my focus is on monsters. We’ll start with Beowulf, then The Tempest (and perhaps A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth too), and finally Shelley’s Frankenstein. What makes something a monster? Are monsters made or born? How does our idea of the monstrous change over time?

Mostly I wanted to teach these three texts, so I created a driving question to link them all. But mostly, I just wanted to read them with my students. I’m curious to see their reactions, especially for Beowulf, which is always a harder sell in an all-girls school. I mean, I’m a woman and I love Beowulf, but when I’ve taught it to young women in the past, it’s been a mixed reaction. The only major female character is a monstrous fen-hag, and the other women in the story serve as peacemakers and such (to solidify alliances and end blood-feuds), so I get why for some of the young women I teach, there’s not much to engage them.

But I’m hoping some of them will come to love the action, the world-building, and the overall spirit of the poem. I myself read it in high school (part of it anyway), and I’ve loved Beowulf ever since.

I’m not making any kind of resolution to blog everyday or anything. Not that such a goal is bad; I’ve attempted every-day blogging before and it was great. But I can’t meet such a challenge this year, nor do I really want to. I’m more focused on staying consistent with my fiction writing and increasing my word count in that realm. But I still like blogging and don’t want it falling dormant. Thus, my commitment to a more regular blogging habit for 2024.

Maybe once a week? Maybe once every two weeks? Maybe several times a week? I don’t have firm plans as of yet. I’m waiting to see how these first few weeks of January shake out, how much time I can actually find to blog more frequently, and how easy it is to find topics to write about. As I mentioned earlier, I have plans, but maybe those plans aren’t tenable. Time will tell.

One of my biggest goals/ambitions for this new year, on a personal level, is to finally start playing more of the board games and role-playing games that adorn my shelves. We have an entire closet filled with board games we’ve (mostly) never played. This is so frustrating! I LOVE board games, and yet here in my very house there languishes a collection of sundry entertainments and diversions of which I have never availed myself. This is madness!

I plan to correct such mismanagement by taking one game out each week and learning to play it. I may play it with husband or friends, or I may play solo, but either way, I’m committing myself to playing the board games in my house. Carpe diem and all that.

I’m going to try blogging about the games too; I just need a snappy name to call this “regular” feature. (I have “The Things That Shaped Me” feature which I should also get back to, but maybe I’ll call my board game excursion “Cabinet of Curiosities” or something of that sort… which I know is already a tag on my blog, but this will just make it more official.)

Anyway, I’m not calling any of this a “resolution.” I make New Year’s resolutions, and I’ve already made a few in other realms of my life for 2024, so I’m not opposed to resolutions in general. But I’m not making a blogging resolution this year. Nothing that firm. This blogging commitment is more of a New Year’s inclination. An urge to blog more. Let’s see how it shakes out.

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