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| S. R. Karfelt/The Glitter Globe |
Sometime around
midnight I come to life. It’s not that I’m not lively during the day; it’s
simply that my creativity can lie dormant during daylight hours. As the night
grows late, fully-formed scenes start flitting through my head and I just know the perfect
dialogue for the characters in my story.
So for the first few
hours it’s like my muse and I are hosting a rave.
And it all just works.
Words are flowing effortlessly. When I write I need absolute quiet and it’s
only in the middle of the night that all interruptions stop. Even distractions like
social media tend to slow and fade come 2:00 a.m., so I’m sharp, game-on, dancing
with my muse. The muse is a thing. Mostly I think it’s just a link between our
subconscious and our conscious, and apparently mine runs on lunar power.
If you’re not a writer
you might be thinking something along the lines of, “Puh-leeze, girlfriend!
Writing’s not a real job! You make stuff up and drink coffee all day! How hard
can it be?”
It’s like the perfect
double axle salchow in ice-skating. It looks effortless when performed correctly, but getting there is a whole different ball of wax.
Since I live in the
real world, most of the time, my all night writes aren’t a perfect solution to
getting all my words onto the page. Sometimes sleep deprivation can make some
ideas seem really brilliant and they’re not brilliant at all. Not even a little
bit.
When I get tired I have
tendency to keep right on writing and getting absolutely nowhere. Sometimes I’ll
just bang out a random scene that serves absolutely no purpose in the story. It’s
just spinning my wheels. I can spin my wheels for hours and
hours, if not the entire night. It’s a gift. Let's pretend.
When that happens, I slip into writing drivel and start writing words that I’ll need to cut out
and eliminate the next day. It’s always something of a shock to reread bad
story. It’s taken me years to get to the point where I can admit to myself when
something just doesn’t work and needs to go. It’s a painful lesson.
The thing is, no matter
how painful rewrites or scene deletion might be, nothing can beat the thrill of
being a night owl writer. Does it look like as much fun as it is? Because it’s
a real hoot! Are any of you night owls? I don’t only do the night owl thing for writing, I’ve
been known to run the vacuum or start laundry about then too, and I love when I
can call other night owl friends up and have a chat in the middle of the night!
Anyone?
One big bag of "nope" for you.
ReplyDeleteI like my sleep. Maybe if I didn't have a day job I'd stay up later? But as is, I'm far too committed to my 7-9 hours ;)
Yep, I hear that, Kelsey! This is my day job, or rather, my night job. ;) Thing is even with this preference I can't write all night every night. The real world has no mercy for anyone who wants to sleep 6-noon.
ReplyDeleteI find that night, while being my peak social/cleaning time tends to be less than productive as far as writing goes. It may be due to my long-standing habit of telling myself stories till I fall asleep. And these days I go to bed pretty dang early so I can be on the same schedule as my hubby.
ReplyDeleteWhat hours are your best Ashley?
ReplyDeleteOne drawback to writing all night--especially if you back to back a few days of them, is that sometimes you still have to participate in morning. I'll admit I'm very tired tonight after my four meager hours of interrupted sleep this morning.