When do you do your best writing?

[tlbodine]

I've always been one of those "go on long writing binges, disappear from the world" writers who works in fits and starts. Which is fun and Romantic and everything, but not very good for being productive. I'd really like to jump on the "write every day" wagon, but I can't seem to find a good time that works.

If I get up early and write first thing in the day, I tend to be more productive with writing -- but I also have a hard time transitioning back out so I can do other things with my day. I spend the rest of the day feeling almost drunk (like I'm halfway into another world) and creatively "spent," and my day job (which also happens to be writing, but of a different sort) suffers.

If I wait til the end of the day, I'm often too frazzled by whatever emotional nonsense has happened during the day to really concentrate. Or I get caught up doing other things and realize it's 3AM and I'm exhausted so the writing gets pushed back to another time.

Anybody want to share their scheduling secrets? Any tips for transitioning your brain between different types of writing? Am I the only person who gets that "drunk" feeling?

 

[saellys]

Thanks to spreadsheeting my NaNoWriMo experience, I discovered that my word count (and, IMHO, general quality) increases at least twofold during late afternoon writing sessions. The problem with this is that I only get a late afternoon writing session if my kid takes a second nap, and that only happens once a week. Actually, I think my increased word count is linked to the knowledge that this opportunity comes so rarely and my kid could wake up at any moment.

 

[Philip Overby]

I rarely get a chance to write during the day and even when I do, I don't do it. Writing during the day just makes me feel weird sometimes. Night time after work seems to work best for me recently because I have a schedule set up now where I write for at least one hour a night. I can get a lot of work done in an hour if I really stick with it. That means no checking email, Facebook, etc. while I'm doing it. I usually put on one of those one hour mixes of music and just let it go.

I want to start getting a weekend schedule set up so that I'm not wasting optimal writing time. So far, haven't got to that point yet.

I think if you just pick a time everyday to write, you will get the flow. Just like doing anything else, if you schedule the time to do it, it'll become routine.

 

[MadMadys]

Nighttime by far is when I tend to get the most writing done. I used to think it had to do with simply working during the day but as I've taken some time off, I still really only like to write at night. Something about the peace and quiet helps me focus. Not that I keep much of that silence going before I put my headphones on and blast music. Possibly helps to have nothing but the glow of the screen in front of me with the blue hue of my keyboard below.

 

[Gurkhal]

I pretty much agree on that the morning is the best time to write. Sadly its the best time to do everything else as well and thus it isn't very often that I get to write in that period of the day.

 

[Shockley]

When I am writing I carry around a notebook and write whenever I have a moment. Some of my more productive periods seem to be 'other people's showers as we're waiting to go out' and 'oh my god where is the waitress?'.

 

[wordwalker]

Lots of great ideas. Certainly you have to adapt to that danged Real Life stuff, and keeping a pad around is vital (really, what's worth the risk that you'll get and forget a good idea?). And Saellys seems to be doing well by just maxing out that best opportunity, knowing it's fleeting.

I like the theory that the morning mind is creative and the afternoon is critical-- for a lot of us, and schedule permitting, anyway. So I use mornings for coordinating my thoughts and fleshing them out into scenes, and if I get tired in the afternoon I shift to lists and basics of what things might be in the next scenes, so the next morning I'm ready to go to town on them. (And the rest of the day, I might either add to or flesh out those with my trusty pad, I just never know what'll come to me.)

 

[Fiarene]

I too go on mass-writing binges! I have long, desert-like periods of time where I just do NOTHING but fret over the fact that I am not writing lol. I mostly like to write at night time and I'm very fond of staying up ridiculously late and punching out a couple thousand words. But like I said, I go through dry spells. So when I feel like writing, I tend to grip onto it really tight and get as many words out as I can before I slump again

 

[MFreako]

Being as I'm unemployed right now, I am finding the morning time to be the best time of the day for writing.
And while a little off topic, I find myself really inspired to write after listening to some high-energy music.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Night... Late and night, when the kids are sleeping and the absence of sound is broken only by the clinking of a whiskey bottle on a rocks glass.

 

[tlbodine]

I tried a new thing the other night that seemed to work quite well. I took a notebook to bed with me and scribbled out several pages of "zero draft" -- just super rough, mostly fragments and bullet points more than a real story, but more detailed than an outline. The next morning, I transcribed all of that, cleaning it up as I went, and in the process got into the flow and ended up adding a few hundred more words of fairly decent draft.

I'm going to see about doing this more. Not just before bed, but any time I get a second, scribbling out some scenes, then transcribing them when I get a free second.

 

[Wilson Geiger]

I typically write anywhere from 500-1500 words while I'm on lunch at work. Once i'm home from work, and have done the family stuff, I try to close the door to my room, put on the headset, and write by myself, with no interruptions, for at least another hour or two. This is usually when my best work comes out; I'm a total night owl and my creativity seems to spark at night.

 

[RTGerardson]

Writing goes best for me either in the evening (preferably after dinner, so I can focus on just the writing), or at night (especially when I'm unable to sleep, I get this restless vibe going on with my head canted slightly towards dreamland). Apart from that, I get inspired by reading, watching or listening something that gets an image in my head. I'm a total creativity vampire, leeching off the genius of others (though not the content of course).

 

[Xaysai]

My career requires me to travel extensively for work, so I spend 3-4 nights a week in a hotel. With not much else to do, I generally hit the fitness center at night to run 2-3 miles and I find that's the best time for me to brainstorm, and my best writing time comes after that.

It's kinda like the movie "Sucker Punch", I get on the treadmill and retreat into my own world in my head : )

 

[Epaminondas]

Put me in the nightowl category too. Generally it's useless for me to try and write before the rest of the house goes to sleep.

For me to get anything done I have to be able to get on a roll without being interupted. If I get pulled away to do something it takes me 45 minutes to get back into that train of thought again after I sit back down.