I’ve realised that I’m not an afternoon person. I used to be a Night Owl, but in the last few years I’ve developed a morningness to my rhythm. I don’t enjoy waking early, but I like being up and active early. This affects my writing habits. I prefer to write either early in the morning or late at night. By 'early in the morning' I mean soon upon waking. Writing early in the morning, before the trauma of the day, I find more productive. I also like writing late at night because when the town is quiet and everyone is asleep, I feel a sense of relief. It's like a mental burden is lifted when the thoughts of others stop interfering with my own on some shared psychic plane yet to be confirmed by science. I guess this emphasises the relationship between thinking and writing for me. I can’t think straight (nor bendy for that matter) in the afternoons. Anyway, as a copywriter I don’t have the luxury of choosing the timing; I have to perform on schedule like a circus seal. But for truly creative writing, like where you get carried away in the winds of imagination and anything can happen, early morning or late night are the ticket. Does anyone else have time preferences? And why?
I write at random points in the day, whenever I can afford it. My 'schedule' is usually all over the place so I can't really reserve a specific time except maybe at night. But at night, I'm usually tired as hell, so no good comes out of the keyboard... usually. If I'm not tired as hell, however, then night time is the best time because nobody can come in and shatter my concentration.
Your poll does not include evening or multichoice. I write first thing in the morning, at lunchtime and all evening. About 5-6 hours a day. I usually spread this across several sessions ... max 1 hr.
I don't really have a preferred time of day to write. I do, however, like to have a good stretch of time to work. I guess I would say something like a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when I can pretty much spend the whole day wrapped up in my story is good. I used to like to write at night, but too often I would end up writing all night until the sun came up without even realizing how late/early it got. But sometimes I still do that. Yeah, I can pretty much write whenever.
I go through phases, and some of them are pretty random. I'll write early for a while, extremely late for a while and all over the place whenever I can for a while. For the last year and a half, I've been getting off work at 3 in the afternoon. I work at home, so lately, if I'm not picking the boy up from school, I just switch from the bedroom laptop to the living room desktop and get started. Or I screw around and procrastinate and get very little done. Often the rest of the day after work involves a healthy mix of progress and procrastination. On weekends, I have a tendency to pop in and out of writing mode according to whatever people are making me do for the day. I end up staying up super late most of the time. I can write all night. It screws up my sleep schedule, but I get a lot of words on the page, well, a lot for me, anyway.
I write on weekends and days off almost exclusively. On days where I don't have to work, I sleep until I am no longer feeling tired, which means I'm snoozing til noon or later. I might fart around on the internet for an hour or so, like pop in here for a bit, maybe check the votes for the contests, skim the news headlines.. But then it's time to get down to business. I have found that it's easy for me to keep myself accountable when I have a fairly regular writing schedule. I assume I am writing, unless I consciously take an afternoon off to submit or to take a little writing vacation to play video games. My sessions are almost always between 3 and 5 hours long, which is my most productive window. It helps that I don't have a personal life, so there are no interruptions to my routine. I am a creature of habit. I tried writing in the evening after work before, and I just can't. My mental energy has been spent. The best I can do on weeknights is to edit, and only if I'm on a tight schedule and don't have much choice. A very rare thing happened last week where I wrote a flash piece while at work, because it was a ridiculously slow day. That'll probably never happen again, though. The dog days of summer are over, and it's the busy season from now til Christmas. But for writing ideas? I jot those down at any time, whenever they come to me, even in the middle of the night.
I'll take it when I can get it. I can write through disturbances. It's something you learn between working irregular hours, six cats, a short-fused teen and her dimwit boyfriend, and sharing a room with my girlfriend who is always on call for work. But I'd prefer not to be disturbed all the feckin time, so I guess I should change my answer to "night." Though usually I've gotten enough writing done during the whenevers to allow myself some videogames at night. Honesty requires me to say that I'll probably play a game anyway and just tell myself that "hanging on Writing Forums counts as writing because it's right there in the title."
I'll write whenever the mode hits me. I've begun to struggle with saying I've got a few minutes, so I'll go write. I mainly read what I've already written and rarely progress things. My best is when I'm just thinking about it in the front or back of my mind, and something hits me. Since I've worked from home since the COVID lunacy began (probably the only good thing I saw come out of the crisis), I can write whenever something hits me. I was working, thought of something, and spent the next four hours writing. Of course, I had to make up my work later that night (-:.
I generally find myself going over scenes or plot points as i fall asleep. So morning has the over night processing fresh in my mind.
But do you often dream when you sleep? I once tried this method and I found myself dreaming and tomorrow morning I forgot all my memories.
I do this alot myself. And it doesn't matter if you remember when you wake. It is about getting tge subconcious mind working on the story issues, so that when you sit down to write the overnight processing flows in ideas and inspiration on to the page.
