Hilary Mantel kept a notebook beside her bed and reached for it the moment she woke, before the world could crowd in. She trusted those first blurry minutes, when she was still half inside a dream, more than any tidy afternoon at the desk.
The First Hour After Waking
Mantel treated the minutes right after waking as her most valuable working time, when her mind was still loose and close to sleep. She believed writing carries a built-in resistance that hardens as you come fully awake, so she tried to get words down before that resistance had a chance to set in. Plenty of mornings the pages were half-formed or made little sense. That was fine by her. Once she'd written anything at all, the day already counted as a writing day, and the harder work tended to follow more easily from there.
The habit ran deep. Mantel said that missing her morning writing left her feeling almost injured. On the days it worked, she'd often set the notebook down and drift back to sleep for a while, then return later to shape whatever the early scribble had turned up.
I keep my notebook by my bed and the first thing I do when I wake up is write ... break it before you're really awake, and then you can say, 'Today I have written.' It doesn't matter what nonsense it is.
Hilary Mantel, interviewed by Jasper Rees, The Arts Desk, 2009
Silence and the Dream State
The early hour mattered because it kept her close to the dream state, where images and phrases surfaced on their own instead of being forced. She woke slowly and didn't want to talk, letting the day's writing begin to unroll in her head before anyone spoke to her. Noise ruined it. Mantel said she worked best in silence, and that voices in nearby rooms disturbed her terribly and knocked her into a rough start.
Sleep itself was part of the work. She described a bell clanging in her head at odd hours, a sign that a piece of the book had arrived, and she'd climb out of bed to catch it before the feeling and tone behind the words drained away. The writing came first, and the schedule bent around it.
For the wider picture, the desk, the index cards, and how those mornings fed the novels, see the full Hilary Mantel writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Write before you're fully awake. Keep paper by the bed and get words down before the day's resistance sets in.
- Let bad pages count. Any words at all made it a writing day for Mantel, which made the next day easier.
- Guard the silence. She protected the first hour from talk and noise so the writing could surface.
- Catch the 3am idea. When a scene wakes you, write it down before the tone slips away.