I’m fully aware that summer lasts another month, but I’m still stuck on the September=school schedule. Actually, for the last few years, late August=school. For the first time in more years that I’ll own up to, I’m not going “back to school.” I left my high school library job last spring when I had some senior girls ask if they could bring in their copies of my Brava debut Mistress by Mistake for me to autograph. That made me a bit nervous—what if they read “the good parts” aloud in the lunchroom? I had enough years in the system to qualify for a monthly pittance, so I bowed out gracefully before my superintendent had to field calls from concerned parents about the crazy library lady.
My early retirement threw my writing schedule all out of whack. No longer did I have to get up at 4 AM to get a thousand words in before I left for work. I could eat lunch without plotting in my little notebook in the grubby teachers’ lounge. I could do copy edits in my bathing suit on my deck. I could have a life.
All this free time is taking some getting used to. I’d like to say it’s made me more productive, but I would be fibbing. *g* I think (relatively) better early in the morning, so I’m not sleeping in. I still catch the sun rise over the lake most mornings, even if I take my time getting dressed and getting my characters undressed. 
What’s your morning routine? What do you most look forward to when you ditch your day job? I’ll send beautiful coverflats of my upcoming books, the December anthology Lords of Passion and January’s Mistress by Midnight to today’s commenters. Just e-mail me at maggie@maggierobinson.net with your mailing address, and check out the books page on my website for a sneak peak at my novella Not Quite a Courtesan!
Maggie:
I know what you mean – I gave up supervising the school science lab for exactly the same reason!
In order to be productive writing, I had to make up a new schedule for myself. I devote mornings to writing, after getting the words going in my head with the NYT crossword. Once I get the page count done, then I can play on blogs, Facebook, doing research or having a real life. But only after the pages are done!