The Confident Fiction Author
Hey there my fellow author, I’m Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, an old soul kind of writer living my dream as a full-time author and authorprenuer.
But I didn’t start out living a confident creative lifestyle. I struggled with the fears and the mental and emotional barriers that so often plague writers at all stages of their author career.
But the truth is that, with the right knowledge, tools, and training, you can overcome those barriers. I’m here to teach you how I’ve developed a lifestyle that’s allowed me to publish 19 books (and counting).
Each week as you tune into the Confident Fiction Author podcast, you’ll get clarity on the steps you need to take to advance your writing career. Whether it’s developing your ideal writing routine, tackling new skills like dictating your fiction, or overcoming the obstacles life throws your way, this podcast will help you live a more confident, creative lifestyle.
Free resources for you:
The Confident Fiction Author Toolkit: https://www.fictioncourses.com/toolkit
Dictation + Scrivener Power Combo: https://www.fictioncourses.com/dictation
Dictation for Authors: Tools and Tips of the Trade: https://www.fictioncourses.com/dictation
5 Stereotypes to Avoid When Writing about Native Americans: https://www.fictioncourses.com/stereotypes
The Confident Fiction Author
#20: How Your Morning Routine Could Make You a Better Writer
I want to start off with acknowledging that you may not be a morning person. That's okay! When I read the book, "Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod, he shared that some 75% of his readers come into his book as declared not-morning people. That changes for them once they read this book.
While I’m not here to convince you to become a morning person, I can say that developing a solid morning routine - after spending my teen and young adult years without one - has changed my life.
Wherever you land on the spectrum of being a morning, afternoon, or evening person, I hope that sharing the details of my morning routine with you is enlightening and encouraging.
If you are ready to rethink your mornings, I encourage you to listen in for practical tips and insights.
Don't forget to check out my "Morning Pages Mini Course," which equips you with one of my favorite tools for a powerful start to the day!
You can enroll in my "Morning Pages Mini Course" at fictioncourses.com/morningpages. Use the coupon code "ConfidentMorning" to get it for just $9 (regular price $49. Ends March 17, 2025)
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Free resources for you:
The Confident Fiction Author Toolkit: fictioncourses.com/toolkit
Dictation + Scrivener Power Combo Mini Course: fictioncourses.com/dictation
Dictation for Authors: Tools and Tips of the Trade: fictioncourses.com/dictationguide
5 Stereotypes to Avoid When Writing about Native Americans: fictioncourses.com/stereotypes
Hey there, my fellow author. I'm Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, an old soul kind of writer living my dream as a full-time author and entrepreneur. But I didn't start out living a confident, creative lifestyle. I struggled with the fears and the mental and emotional barriers that so often plague writers at all stages of their author career. But the truth is that with the right knowledge, tools and training, you can overcome those barriers. I'm here to teach you how I've developed a lifestyle that's allowed me to publish 19 books and counting. Each week, as you tune into the Confident Fiction Author podcast, you'll get clarity on the steps you need to take to advance your writing career. Whether it's developing your ideal writing routine, tackling new skills like dictating your fiction, or overcoming the obstacles life throws your way. This podcast will help you live a more confident, creative lifestyle. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Hey there, my friend, and welcome to this week's episode of the Confident Fiction Author Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, and today we are talking morning routines. Specifically, I want to share my morning routine with you.... Because kind of geek out on this, I like to know what other people's on t routines , are, but I don't get to hear it from authors, specifically and especially fiction authors. But before we go there, I just want to acknowledge that you may not be a morning person. I hear you, I see you and in fact when I read the book the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, which I do recommend. I don't agree with everything in his book, but it is really good, and one of the things that he included is where he said that some 75% of his readers come into his book as declared not morning people. Now that does change for them once they read his book. And I can tell you that I was not a morning person several years ago. I was not someone who liked to get up early in the mornings. I slept in as late as I could and dragged around and didn't really get down to business until late in the morning or even noon before I really felt like I was getting my day together and by that point I felt like the day was pretty well wasted. So while I'm not here to convince you to become a morning person, I can say that becoming a morning person myself, my morning routine, has changed my life. I don't say that lightly. Getting my mornings together and being intentional about them has truly changed how I live my life and how I do my author career. So wherever you land on the spectrum of being a morning person, an afternoon person, an evening person, a night owl, I hope that sharing my morning routine with you is enlightening and encouraging.
Speaker 1:Let's get into it. What does my typical morning look like? So I wake up without an alarm and I feel very blessed to do that. Anytime I do set my alarm because I'm needing to get up super early for an appointment or get to the airport, something like that. I just feel this apprehension around it and even if it's set for a time that I'm very comfortable with getting up by like 530 or six in the morning, I'll go ahead and set my alarm just to make sure that I'm up. And I still feel apprehensive about it because I'm so accustomed to not waking up by an alarm.
Speaker 1:So on my typical morning I don't have an alarm set. I just go with what my body feels like, what it needs for sleep, and that changes with the seasons, which is really hard for me to accept because I want to be up somewhere between 530 and 630 every morning. But I have found that's a struggle to keep that consistent, especially in the summertime, when you have that time change and an hour of your life gets sucked out. I just so don't like that. Plus an hour of your life gets sucked out, I just so don't like that. Plus, the sun is coming up now later, and that's what wakes me up oftentimes, and it just gives me a sense that I'm getting up with the sunrise, which in the wintertime is more like six o'clock in the morning, and in the summer it's seven, 730. And so it's. It's really annoying, but I have learned that I need to just go with the cycles of the season. It stays daylight later in the evening, so I'm not going to bed as early, which means I'm just not going to get up as early. So my wake up time is anywhere between 5 am and 7 am, depending on the season, depending on how heavy my workload was the previous day, which is usually Monday, and so I'll sleep in a little bit later on Tuesday and just allow my body to get the sleep that it needs.
Speaker 1:The first thing I do is wash my face and brush my teeth, and then I go into the kitchen and I get my lemon juice with just a dash of salt and a little bit of stevia or stevia, as some people pronounce it to sweeten it just a little bit, and it's zero calories. So I'm not worried about completely breaking my fast with that. But I have heard that getting started with a little bit of lemon juice and salt in the morning just replenishes your electrolytes for the day. So I typically do that in the mornings and I also go ahead and get myself a mug of water so that I can rinse that lemon juice off my teeth and also just get myself hydrated after all night of not drinking anything. I take that into the living room where I have a little shelf thing set up with a basket underneath it that I'm so grateful I incorporated that into our living room furniture Because before that I didn't have a place for my morning routine stuff, and so it was.
Speaker 1:It was scattered between my office and my bedroom and every morning I would sit down and I didn't have what I needed for my morning routine. But now I have that and so that's where I keep my my Bible and my morning pages, notebook and pen and all. So that's the first thing I do is I do my Bible reading and I just have my prayer time and silent time. That's also when I'll do some deep breathing and just really get oxygen flowing to my brain, and once I've done that, I will get into my morning pages, which I've talked about morning pages before. If you're not familiar with them or you haven't done morning pages, I'm going to talk about that a bit more at the end, because it just makes such a difference in my life as a creative and I love getting to spend that time handwriting my morning pages to really get me set for the day.
Speaker 1:Now, right after I finish my morning pages, I get into fiction writing, and this is something that I had in my routine years ago and I fell off of it. I would get disrupted from my fiction writing or I would be in seasons of research and editing and that's just not really conducive to do in my chair in the mornings because I don't have my computer. So that's why I incorporated doing five minute fiction, where I can just write on a random story, just to keep that habit of fiction writing in my morning routine. I love doing it first thing in the morning, before I get my brain going in 100 different directions once I get to my computer, so because I dictate, I'm able to just pull up my Scrivener app on my phone and do my fiction writing. Before I did dictation, I did do fiction writing with my morning routine. I used my old AlphaSmart Neo keyboard and so I know a lot of authors are kind of going back to the distraction free writing device. So if you are typing, that's a way that you can do it first thing in the morning without having the distraction or having to haul your laptop into your morning routine space. So for me, I am in a season of writing books that I'm going to publish, so that's what I do during my fiction time. But other times, if I don't, like I said, to get fiction writing back into my routine, I did start this five minute fiction and that is one of my most popular episodes. So go back and listen to that if you haven't already, and that is episode number 10. All right, so after I do my fiction writing and I make sure I sync my Scrivener app so that it's ready whenever I pull it up on my computer.
Speaker 1:The newest addition to my morning routine actually there's two new additions and they came from that book Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod H-A-L and then his last name Elrod E-L-R-O-D, and he actually has a book Miracle Morning for Writers that I'm going to read as well. So these are a couple of things that I added to my routine after reading that book, and that is reading some nonfiction. I always felt guilty about reading in the mornings because to me, I needed to do my morning routine to get myself awake and prepared for the day, and then it was time to get to work, just get after it and to slow down and spend some time. Reading just felt like it was. It was taking up time that I really needed to spend at my desk working.
Speaker 1:So the light bulb came for me whenever I was reading Hal's book, the Miracle Morning, and he talked about how he wanted to grow personally, do his personal and professional development, and he started thinking well, when can I do this? When can I do exercise, you know, work out and read to feed my mind and to grow myself? When am I going to do that? And he thought about the evening. He tried the evening and that didn't work because he was too tired and there was too many distractions. He was just too scattered from the day, which is where I found myself in terms of reading nonfiction books. The evening just really didn't work because my brain was fried and I would try to read a few pages and I would find myself reading the same paragraphs over and over and just not absorbing the content. So I was at the same place. I'm like I'm with you, hal, I can't do evenings much in terms of nonfiction or development type of reading.
Speaker 1:And so he thought well, what about the afternoons? Again, so many distractions. That's when you're trying to wrap up your day and finish running errands. And so there wasn't a solid time that he could take to do his professional development time. And so he reluctantly came to the mornings development time. And so he reluctantly came to the mornings. Like he decided, I have to do this before everything else gets going in the day or I will not get it done at any other time in the day. And I'm just kidding myself telling the story that eventually I will work reading time into some part of my life and I don't actually have a plan for that. And realistically, I've tried these other things and they are not going to work.
Speaker 1:So that's when he went to the morning and developing his morning routine for his personal development. The light bulb for me came on when he called his morning routine. He started off with defining it as his personal development time and then he started calling it his miracle morning when he called it his personal development time. And then he started calling it his miracle morning when he called it his personal development time. That's when it clicked for me and I realized that I didn't need to feel guilty about reading in the morning, because if that was a part of me and my personal and professional development, then that's work. So why not put it in my quote work hours first thing in the morning before I get into 100 different tasks on my computer and projects and all that I'm working on. So I'd still call it my morning routine, but it helps my brain to think of it as my personal development time, because I do spend a good bit of time in the morning on this routine and I'll talk about that here in a minute of why it's important to me and why I don't feel guilty about the amount of time I spend in the mornings before I quote get to work.
Speaker 1:So that's what I've added to my morning routine and so some days I'm able to get in up to 45 minutes of nonfiction reading time and really that's what I'm aiming for, if I get up early enough in the morning I know that I'll have enough time to get in a good 30-45 minutes of nonfiction reading time. And other times whenever I slept in a bit later or my prayer time went a little longer or I got caught up in my fiction writing and I went a bit longer. On that, I will shorten down my reading time, and that's what's great about having that pocket of time assigned in my morning routine. So I've expanded my time that I spend in the mornings on this. That way, if it gets gobbled up by other things, including sleep, I just shorten down the amount of time and I may only spend 10 minutes or 15 minutes doing my nonfiction reading. So that's my biggest flex that I have with my morning routine. And so, as you're thinking about a morning routine, that's something to consider. Is there something you can put in there? That is, I won't call it a luxury, but it is an extra thing or an extra amount of time, or it's flexible in the amount of time that you can spend on it, so that if you need to shorten it down, you've got a shorter morning. That's one area that you can do.
Speaker 1:The second thing that I've added to my morning routine that came from the Miracle Morning book is declarations or affirmations, and I've heard about affirmations. I've heard people's affirmations. I've heard people's affirmations. I've heard people teach on it, and it just wasn't something that clicked with me or that I just didn't care for how they did it, just in short, he teaches it quite differently and I love his method and so I followed it. Like he even has a template in there for creating this, and so I followed it and created myself three declarations that I read out loud every morning after my nonfiction time, and so I won't go into the formula. If you're interested in learning, if you've never done affirmations and you don't like how everyone else does it, or if you want to just see a different way of approaching it and thinking about those as more declarations rather than affirmations, I do recommend you get the book Miracle Morning and check it out for yourself. It was the number one reason why I bought and read the book, because I wanted to really get into his method of doing it, and I'd heard he'd had he had a unique way of presenting it, so that was the main reason I read it. So if that's something that you've always wanted to do but you weren't sure you wanted to do, go check that out in his book.
Speaker 1:After I do that, I do my stretches and then I'll usually do a little bit of a light workout. I have some exercises that I do for my back which has helped tremendously in strengthening my back and recover from some issues that I had whenever I was doing my nonfiction book a few years ago where I kind of wrecked my back and it took a bit to get back in shape from that. So I don't do a heavy workout at this time. That is something I want to expand my morning routine to. So as far as improvements or where I want to go with my morning routine and personal development, I do want to eventually get more, more of a workout in the mornings. So at that point it's off to the kitchen to empty the dishwasher, make myself a tea and get to my desk, which I'm again very blessed with a short commute to my office from the kitchen, and so I will then fire up my computer, pull out my planner, review my day and get to work.
Speaker 1:I know I promised to share how long my morning routine takes, so I spend about two hours on my morning routine and that may sound like a lot, but I'm going to be honest I'd love someday to have a three hour morning routine. One of my virtual mentors he talked about that one time where he has a three hour morning routine, and I remember just feeling shocked at the idea of spending that much time in the morning on your routine routine, so for me, it took a while before that felt normal and before I quit feeling guilty about the amount of time that I spent on it, and now I love that I get to have a two hour morning routine, especially when I think of all of the things that it includes, like the extra reading time, and it's also including doing the dishes and just really making sure everything is ready for the day. What really helped with that, though, was reframing it to be called my personal development time, and it's also my fiction writing time. So when I say two hours, this isn't just me staring off into space or doing a heavy workout. When you look at all that I do in that two hours, it's actually a short amount of time to me, and I love that. I can now look at it as my personal development time, and also that's my fiction writing time, and so when I say I would love to expand it to three hours, that's to expand the amount of fiction writing time that I have and to do that workout that I mentioned. I would love to get in a more robust workout in the mornings.
Speaker 1:I also look at my morning routine as my warm up for the day, which is really the heavy workout that I have ahead, and so getting in that full couple of hour morning routine really gets me mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually prepped for the heavy workout that I have for that day and that's why I love my morning routine. I take it very seriously. I do it every morning, monday through Friday. I am starting to do it more on Saturday and Sunday because, for reason, I wanted to just get myself the whole weekend off and I thought by not doing my full morning routine it would actually make me feel better and really shift me over to doing recreation or house stuff, all the other life stuff, and I wouldn't feel like I was preparing for a work day, like I wanted to take off for the weekends. But what I found is it really made me sluggish for the weekend, like it had the opposite effect not doing my morning routine, and so I've started incorporating that better into my Saturdays and Sundays, including my morning pages.
Speaker 1:What I don't do is I don't. I give myself permission to not do my fiction writing if I don't want to, and especially on Sundays. But on Saturday, if I want to go ahead and do a bit of fiction writing, I'll do it, but it's also that time that I give myself permission to not do it. And typically I'll spend more time reading on Saturday morning in my morning routine and go ahead and end the week with that. And it's not always nonfiction personal development books that I read on the weekend For my morning routine I may go ahead and take my novel, and so on my Saturday morning reading time in my morning routine it may be getting to read a novel, and I found I'm much less sluggish and I'm enjoying the weekends more because I have spent that time taking care of myself, taking care of my body, taking care of even the dishes, like the whole thing, and really setting myself up to enjoy the day.
Speaker 1:Wrapping it up here, I just want to say that everyone has a morning routine. It just may not be intentional. So what I want to encourage you to do right now, as we're wrapping up this episode, is to jot down what you currently do every morning and decide if it's really what you want to do every morning. It may be shutting off the alarm, jumping out of bed, brushing your teeth, getting dressed and heading out the door, or getting the kids ready to go to school. Whatever your mornings look like, especially if they're hectic, I just really want to encourage you to read the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and take to heart his encouragement of how you can really utilize those mornings to make your life better overall and specifically as a fiction author. Being able to get your fiction writing in, get some reading time in, do your morning pages and set yourself up for the day, I think you will make huge strides forward in living your best creative lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Now, I promised to tell you a bit more about Morning Pages here, and the reason why I wanted to focus on this is I did create a mini course Morning Pages mini course that you can find over at fictioncoursescom forward slash morning pages, and I have a coupon code for you to get $40 off that mini course. So it makes it just $9. And that coupon code is confident morning. So go to fictioncoursescom forward slash morning pages and click on the enrollment button at the bottom of the page. You'll see where you can enter your coupon code, on the right hand side, and just type in confident morning apply the code to get your $40 off. This course takes you into the nitty gritty of what morning pages are, what the benefits are and how to do them.
Speaker 1:Morning Pages was introduced by Julia Cameron in her book the Artist's Way, and she does talk about doing Morning Pages, and what I have found, though, is a lot of a lot of authors struggle with one how to actually do it physically, what kind of notebook do I use, pen, what should go in the morning pages, and how do I make this a consistent habit, because they do take up a bit of time. But myself, at this point, I can't imagine not doing my morning pages, and in the book the Miracle Morning, he talks about how writing or journaling is an important part of your morning. Reading or journaling is an important part of your morning, and my morning pages does fulfill that, but it fulfills it in a much fuller and richer way than just jotting down a few sentences in a journal. I do that in the evenings, where I jot down my three wins of the day and what was the most important thing that happened that day and what three wins I hope for the next day. And that's a great practice.
Speaker 1:But morning pages is for us creatives, especially fiction authors, to clear away all of the things in our brain and sweep out all the corners of our mind so that we can give ourselves permission to settle in and get some fiction writing done. And that's why I do my fiction writing immediately after my morning pages. You don't have to do it that way, but I have found that to be such a powerful combination and has helped me become more confident as a fiction author than ever before in my life. So again, I have that mini course for you. It's just called Morning Pages and it's over at fictioncoursescom. Forward slash morning pages and don't forget to put in your coupon code, confident morning, to get $40 off that mini course, making it just $9 for you to learn about and incorporate this powerful habit into your morning routine. That's it for this week, my friend. I hope you have a great rest of your day and a great morning tomorrow. I will see you in next week's episode of the Confident Fiction Author. Take care.
