Ever stay up writing all night to discover you're a genius or full of crap? It could go either way at this point. But right now I'm in love with my words and going to drink a lot of coffee today. How do late-night or all-night writing sessions tend to go for you guys? I try not to do this often, but sometimes the words just haunt me in I don't get up and write them down. Know where I'm coming from with this?
To begin with, place all clocks outside the front door and newspaper over the windows The approximate date can still be got from letters, and used to guess if new food should be ordered Descartes had his bread oven - but the Ukraine war is releasing the KGB's old sensory deprivation tanks onto the market And there are those eyeball-keyboards: Speech-Generating Devices All that's missing are implanted intracortical microelectrode arrays - obviously, so you can see what you're writing Or maybe: what ten or fifty or a hundred of you are writing. All at once. Give it ten years Where AI authors lack context, a biomechanical author is context: you'll be the first authors to compose and experience and be a novel
I've done it a bunch of times with mixed results. It's not that I write worse part of the time. It's that an all-nighter isn't always fruitful for me. This weekend, while I was already up past my bedtime, I started writing an entry for a flash fiction contest almost on a whim. It kept me up the rest of the night writing and editing, and examining it later on plenty of sleep, I still love it. I don't write much short fiction. I think it's about the sixth I've finished ever, but I'm pretty proud of it.
By nature, I'm a night writer, but I have to function in the daytime surface world as well. If I am writing late into the night, I forcibly turn my brain off before 3 a.m. so I'm not a complete zombie later on. I can work under partial zombie conditions.
I'm pretty nocturnal by nature, but I try sometimes to keep to more of a daytime schedule. I find I'm fine staying up late, until around the time the sun comes up (God's spotlight as I've heard it called). At that point I feel like a vampire, and I must immediately seek the comfort of my grave. I'm fine for writing late-night, unless I'm really tired. In fact I think I do most of my writing overnight. The typing part anyway, the rest of it happens throughout the day while I'm cooking or doing whatever. I'll be watching a video or something and suddenly pause it and jot some notes so I won't forget the idea I just had.
Night is a convenient time. Everyone is asleep and the world is quiet. You won't have anyone to disturb you and throw you right out of the "zone". That's what matters to me. During the night, nobody can show up with a problem for me to solve and kill my joy. The world around me disappears and I can just write. Now one problem with that is sleep. I don't function very well with little sleep. Others are better at this kind of thing but I need some shut eye or else I feel like a zombie.
Very much the same. My brain just works better at night - I'm sharper, more creative, more focused. I'd stay up writing until the wee hours of the morning every night if I could, but it doesn't pay the bills (yet?), so I have to shut it down at some point to rest up for the day job. The real problem is that when I get on roll writing, it energizes me and makes it even harder to fall asleep (the coffee & tea probably don't help, either, lol). But I've gotten pretty good at doing the partial zombie shuffle through the mornings, so I guess I'm making it work.
I have a system that works pretty well! I keep a notebook on my person during the day in case I have any ideas, and I do plotting and light writing during the daytime Around 9pm is when I start on whatever I’m writing, and I usually write until I can’t prevent myself from falling asleep anymore (can be anywhere from 11pm to almost 2 in the morning.) I have a keyboard for my tablet so I can write in bed at night or if I’m sick, and that’s increased my productivity by a whole lot
