Writers’ clock
I’m a morning writer.
Catch me at 6:30 a.m. and I’m multitasking with machismo. I’m making lunches, drinking coffee, checking email and watching the news. Once the lunches are made I’m writing blog posts, reading blog posts and responding to emails. I check my lists, not once, but twice. I shower and dress, get kids to school. I feed the dogs. I play with the dogs. Sometimes I have coffee with a friend, go to the grocery store or the post office. And then I write. I start with fiction and eventually move to non-fiction. I check all my writer sites and blogs, ponder them, put my two cents in, go back to writing.
Eventually it’s time for lunch.
Sometimes in front of the computer, sometimes in front of the TV. Sometimes both. And this is when my clock ticks louder. The end of the school day is a few hours away. I use this time for editing, revising and letter-writing; for idea generating, proofreading and for internet meandering. After school means being on-call. I’m driving in circles and getting ready for dinner — on my toes not on my behind in front of the computer.
I will work on things through the evening and night that are less creative – more function than form. It’s the way my body clock works. I’m all wound up and ready to rumble early. The thought of pulling out a manuscript at 9pm makes me shudder. And yawn. I wish sometimes that my kids could settle in for the night and that I could hunker down for a few hours of writing. (aren’t all great books written in the middle of the night?) But it doesn’t work that way for me.
I go to sleep early and I’m awake early — with those weekend days with no where to go being sometimes the most productive of all. Because by staying in my pajamas all day – I can pretend it’s always morning!
I guess it’s just part of what makes me tick.
You?
I’m a night writer…after the kids are in bed as you mentioned above. I just discovered this recently. I put on a strong pot of coffee and write until 2 or 3 in the morning. Nothing GREAT has come out of it…but the main thing is that I AM writing, accomplishing something and that’s big for me!!
You sound very efficient during your busy day…I admire that.
Morning all the way. My night-time, the Demon Baby usually has me so exhausted, I can’t think straight. So it’s morning . . . or not at all.
E
I was a night owl all my life until I had 3 babies in 36 months (plus 2 stepkiddies). Sleep deprivation, then 4 years of waking at 4:30 AM for my teaching job ruined all that. Now that I’m not teaching and the kids are teens, my body alarm clock is working its way to a more normal cycle. Good writing happens whenever I’m inching toward deadline pressure and have had just the right amount of coffee.
Mornings here, too, for the serious stuff. It helps that the house is quiet, no interruptions. Later in the day when the fam starts returning and dinner beckons, I lighten up. Evening copying files, reviewing, blogging. Tho I’ll touch base with blogs all day. I guess I work best when least fatigued – morning!
Definitely late afternoon, evening and night writer. I need a few hours at the start of the day to get my brain into creative mode. Usually, I exercise and look at my brokerage account. That wakes me up. ~:-0
As for morning, I’m not really sure what that is. Anything before 9 or 9:30 is the Crack Of Dawn and I often don’t crawl out of bed ’til 10:30. I told this to someone I knew in a meditation class and the first thing she said was, “Ah! So you don’t have kids!” Fortunately for me, cats sleep up to 16 hours a day. So I’m definitely a night person. When I was writing primarily about rock ‘n’ roll, I was in my element, clock-wise.
Inspiration tends to strike for me either 1) when I’m in the shower or 2) late at night, sometimes after I’ve already gone to bed, and I have to grab a pen and write whatever it was down so I don’t forget. I have lots of scribbled pieces of paper floating around, some of which are so scribbled I can’t make out what they say.