Toni Morrison's Daily Routine

Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 and the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. Her writing routine began as a necessity. She wrote her first novels as a single mother with a full-time job as a senior editor at Random House, in the hours before dawn.

She told The Paris Review in 1993 that she needed the time before her small children said "Mama", which was always around 5:00 AM. Her ritual was to make coffee while it was still dark and watch the light come. Then came the children, the commute and the office, and with a nine-to-five job the rest of the writing went into weekends. Some accounts, like Famous Writing Routines, put her start at 4:00 AM, and that's the time we use.

It's for parents and anyone with a full-time job who wants to make something of their own. If no evening hour is ever free of someone needing you, this gives you a quiet one.

You give up late nights and get a clear start to the day, with the rest of it left for the people and the job that need you. Begin by setting your alarm 30 minutes earlier, making a coffee and sitting with the work before the house wakes. The commute, office hours, evenings and weekend writing blocks are our estimates.