Not a Morning Writer
When I was in my senior year of college I had a professor who was hard core into writing. Like he wrote so much his hands cramped up and he had to use one of those speech to text programs to continue. He had calmed down by the time he was my professor, but he was still a naturally intense kind of guy. He would, and probably still does, get up every day at like 5 am to write things. While I admire that kind of discipline and commitment to the craft, I don’t think I’m that kind of writer. I don’t think I’m a morning writer at all.
I wrote a blog post yesterday and it was awesome. I felt like I was actually crafting my words for once instead of just dumping them in the text box and pushing publish. They flowed so much better, the ideas matched and made sense, they were coherent, I think, and didn’t range all over the place on countless bunny trails. I had a focus and I stuck to it the whole way through. I mean, I kind of got distracted at the end by my reading options, but they were related at least. It wasn’t as if I were talking about cats or laundry or something. Anyway, the main point is, I was writing, and it felt good. And I’ve missed that.
When I was in high school and college I did a lot of late night writing. I seemed to do my best work late at night, usually the night before something was due. I’m not sure if it was actually that I wrote better at night or if it was simply the pressure to get it done that powered my productivity, but there were many many stories finished at 2 or 3 am. The problem with night writing now, however, is that my husband is gone all day and I’d like to spend the evenings with him, instead of writing a post or something. I also want to go to bed with him, and that means going in at like 10:30 as opposed to the 11 or 12 I frequented in college with the option to stay up later if the assignment required it. I mean, technically I still have that option, but it’s much less appealing when I could be snuggling my husband and getting some sleep.
It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed blogging these past few months, it’s just been more of a weary task than it used to be. I drag myself out of bed with my husband, sit down in my comfy chair with my laptop and stare at it for a while. Then I go to Facebook, check up on my web comics, read an article or two posted by some friend or other, and come back to the text box, still as blank as when I left the page. And this goes on for a while as I try desperately to pull some topic out of my head that I have something to say about, and I wait and wait and nothing comes. So I give up and ramble at you, much like I’m doing now, and post that and it seems good enough for one day. I’ll do better next time. Except the next time I want to do the same thing, but now I feel bad about it, having just done a ramble last time. And it just gets harder. And I don’t think I’m enjoying it as much as I once did.
I’m still writing, though. I think, maybe it’s good for me to get up and write, at least a little, but maybe not to blog. I was afraid when I switched to three times a week instead of twice that I would get burned out, and I think I may have been right. I think I’ll go back next week. Perhaps I’ll play around with my schedule a little, my everyday as well as my weekly schedule. I want to see if I can get back to that free feeling of writing when I want without sacrificing the schedule. We’ll see how that goes.
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