Writing in the dark
Circadian rhythm be damned...there's something to be said for writing late, and I mean very late at night.
Technically it’s morning, it’s 3:19am, but it’s dark outside - and here I am writing!
I have noticed that I do a lot of my writing late at night, and while I feel I ‘should’ nudge my nocturnal habit into daylight hours (especially now that I am in my day-job-free era), it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Besides, there are so many reasons to keep things exactly as they are.
While everyone sleeps…
There is something cosy, warm and deliciously comforting about writing late at night while everyone is asleep.
It’s just me in my writing space, leisurely turning over phrases in my mind and feeling the freedom of my fingers dancing over the keyboard. The rhythmic scratch of my nails on the keys. The silence as my fingertips settle on the home keys while I pause to think - before they spring into action again, causing words and phrases to appear on the screen before my eyes.
I can hear the wind in the trees outside, but in here, in my writing space, it is calm and still and all is well.
Quiet = less distraction
At different points while growing up I shared a room with one or more of my siblings. The bustle of home life meant that finding a quiet space was an ongoing quest - and often dictated the quality of my homework.
Back then, I found the stillness and quiet of night to be unrivalled - with few, if any, noises competing for the attention of my easily-distracted mind.
No loud voices, no dinner bell (mum’s crafty invention to save her voice and get us all downstairs together at mealtimes before the food got cold), no loud newscaster on television, no deliveries, no door-to-door salespeople, no drop-in visitors, no music with lyrics.
Home life is quieter these days but not as quiet or as intimate as night-time.
They say that sound travels further at night, and sometimes, earlier on in the evening, I can hear the distant rumble of the trains, even though we live nowhere near a train station. The sound is muted and far enough away not to matter, so my writing is never affected.
Time to concentrate
I get a lot more done late at night because I don’t have any of the daytime distractions that take me away from the screen or my desk like:
looking out of the window
taking phone calls
watching squirrels chase each other around the garden
curtain twitching when I can hear something happening outside - even when I know full well it’s the binmen doing the weekly bin collection
wandering off to put on some washing
making a leisurely lunch
making the 50th cup of tea
walking around/running up and down the stairs because my Fitbit says I have 195 steps to go before I meet the hourly target of 250 steps
checking emails repeatedly
picking up my mobile phone to find out what the ping tells me I am missing out on…
Night-time is the perfect writing time.
My concentration is at is at its highest levels and when I focus in like this, I make great headway. Ideas flow, errors are spotted at ten paces and swiftly rectified, inspired character dialogue just happens and plot twists announce themselves.
The space and time to concentrate are particularly important at this point as I work on the continuity aspects of my book and check for inconsistencies or any factual errors.
Satisfaction and inspiration
There is something deeply satisfying about doing work very late at night.
Even better is that sense of having completed a chapter or cracked a particularly thorny writing conundrum. Then, later on during the day, being able to build on the momentum of all of that night-time productivity, with only a few key strokes.
Some of my favourite characters and scenes have come to me late at night and because of this, I like to think that I will always be a night owl.
That said, this can’t go on.
Shifting for health
For a long time now, I have been all too aware of the need for rest and a regular sleep routine, but something I learnt very recently has given me a much-needed jolt.
I heard a health and fitness scientist mention, on a podcast, that, according to research conducted by sleep specialists, staying awake between the hours of 10pm and 4am two days a week for 25 days of the year means you qualify as a shift worker and that shift workers suffer from a number of health issues, as a result of being awake during the hours when the body would normally be asleep. This is further compounded by exposure to blue light from computers and other screen devices immediately before going to bed.
I did a little digging - the journalist in me wanting to fact check the information. It was true.
Armed with this new knowledge, changes are needed. I will be working to find the optimal balance that will allow for some limited late working (say, once a month), and will entail switching to doing the bulk of my writing during daytime hours.
Interestingly, switching to an earlier start to my day (and an earlier bedtime) could be the way to crack this.
Breaking the habit of writing late at night will take some work, and I’ll need to find inventive ways to deal with all those distractions I listed earlier. It’s worth giving it my best shot - and I know my circadian rhythm - and my body - will thank me.
WaS