The Worst Time to Write

Pretty subjective, right? I mean that really boils down to who you are, what your personality is like and what you do with your day (do you have a full time job and write in between or are you a full-time writer with perhaps a part-time side job or no other job at all; just kids running around the house).

Any writer you talk to is going to tell you something different; have a different time or schedule or lack thereof for writing. So, all I can do is tell you what my ‘worst’ time for writing is.

Ahem – the middle of the night.

Okay, lots of writers cherish that time. They say it’s quiet and they can get a lot accomplished. Lots of caffeine and away we go.

Yeah, well, okay for them. To each their own.

Here’s how it goes for me. My best time is morning followed closely by right after lunch. I can write other hours and have written other hours including the middle of the night, but for me it’s not recommended.

For starters in the middle of the night I want to go to sleep. Sorry, no night owl here. Never have been. Age didn’t matter, young, older, whatever, I like to sleep in the dark.

And, because I want to sleep I’ll probably drop off sometime in there while writing and my nose will end up flattened in the keyboard. Painful when I do wake up and messes up the document something terrible.  Also I might add caffeine doesn’t really work for me – unless I drink something caffeinated right before bed time because I had a craving and don’t want it to work. Go figure.

I admit I am one truly lucky writer. I have my study and I have all day to choose my hours. Not that I don’t keep fixed hours because if you don’t you won’t write. Seriously. Keep that in mind.

There was a time when I had to have a full time job and write around it. That consisted of a 9-5 job from which I raced home, grabbed some dinner like I was running a relay race, then lock myself into my study for three to four hours as night settled in. No TV, no movies (except maybe on a weekend) and reading was restricted to my early mornings and lunch hours. It was stressful.  Thankfully at that point I wasn’t married, at least not at first. When I did get married we had to have the ‘talk’ before we got serious. In this case the ‘talk’ wasn’t about sex or kids or anything like that, it was instead about how important my writing was to me and how I couldn’t give it up but was willing to negotiate concessions. 

The guy I married was nothing short of saintly and understanding. He wrote too though he wasn’t the fanatic I was.  (Check out his young adult books on Amazon like The Tales of Caer Alban  The Voyage of thePeregrin and Dragons & Demons, Angels & Eagles). So no doubt that helped. Even if he wasn’t possessed as I was, he at least understood and we worked to have a schedule that allowed for work, my writing and time together. Wonderfully strangely it worked out. I eventually transitioned to a part time job in the afternoons as an attorney’s assistant leaving mornings free for writing.

But that’s in the past now and I write full time. It makes life a lot easier because I don’t have to write evenings (which I never liked anyway) or in the dark of the night.

Another reason my personal worst writing time is late at night or during the wee hours is it’s dark. For some reason my brain cells don’t fire at their best in the dark. Doesn’t matter I got a daylight lamp on my desk. Yes, I can see better with it, but the focusing thing is still a problem.  

Besides, when I force myself to stay up late I’m almost in party mode. It’s like let’s go catch a movie or hang out with friends. Why am I here at this keyboard and staring at a Word document? Why are my characters even up this late?

So you can see why the dead of the night is the worst time for me to be writing. And of course that’s me. How about you? If you write jot down your favorite time in the comments box. If you just love to read, welcome to a little corner of my world.

8 Ways to Carve out Writing Time

If you’re a writer (notice I’m not saying ‘aspiring’ writer - a writer writes, if you write you’re a writer) it’s more than possible you’re at a time in your writing career where you have all kinds of obligations and responsibilities like putting food on the table, paying rent, maintaining a car or maybe going to school or a whole lot of other things.

It may be a novel you’re writing or a screenplay or articles for magazines or non-fiction instructional books to help others. Whatever it is it could be you’re juggling like mad and trying to figure out how to write a novel or script or whatever while you’re holding down a full time job or going to school full time. 

Every writer no doubt has his or her own method of coping. I’m a full time writer now, but I’ll pass along a few things I did along the way. Some you probably won’t like to hear (there can be sacrifice involved in being a writer), others will seem more workable. Still others might just jump-start an idea that will work for you while you’re madly juggling. 

First and foremost, think this through. Do you really want to be a professional writer or is it just a whim or a hobby? I’m not kidding. This has a strong bearing on how much time you carve out and how much time you need to carve out. Those possibilities equal very different goals and needs.

Okay, let’s say you’re aiming at carving out a writing career. Then here are 8 suggestions for finding the time to do just that. Remember you don’t necessarily have to have a LOT of time just regular time. 

• You can get up a hour earlier – of course this may well mean hitting the hay an hour earlier as well so you actually get some sleep. But the very quiet wee hours of the morning can be a great time for writing.

• Writing on a bus or a train while commuting to work can be a great time adder for your work. Just make sure you don’t sit next to a ‘chatty Cathy’ who won’t let you work. 

• There was a time when I arranged with my employer to come in to work an hour earlier so I could take a two hour lunch – during which time I ate while I worked on my latest novel.

• Weekends can be precious, but if you’re serious and you can get spouse and family to understand you can carve out a few hours each weekend to get serious and put words to computer screen and write.

• Holidays are a great time to write and I spent many of them doing just that. It works very well when you’re single. I did it a lot when I was in school. You’ll have to be the judge for when you’ve got a family. Anyway, there are many of them throughout the year for the worker who has some benefits. Among them are the usual, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, but there’s also Veteran’s day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, President’s Day, Martin Luther King Day as well as some local holidays.

• Write in the evenings. It can be every week night that you write or it might just be some. Perhaps you have to work out a deal with your spouse for a number of nights when you come home from work, eat dinner early and have the evening to write uninterrupted. It means less TV and you might have to sacrifice “Thursday night Football” but that’s the way of it. Which is more important?

• Those 15 minute breaks at work can be a great time to jot thoughts and ideas and just let them evolve further if you think of writing instead of hanging out in the coffee room or at the water cooler every day.

• See if you can do compacted work days (i.e. 10 hour days at work) with one day off from regular work where you can use the time writing all day.

Be creative, give it some thought. There are lots of ways to carve out writing time here and there without giving in to panic and despair. If you really work at it you’ll make it, just don’t let the time you carve out for writing get frittered away on social media and you’ll do great.