When Should Writers Write?

What you make is shaped by when and how you make it

Talesmen, Writers & Storytellers

The first talesmen were also storytellers. They shared their tales by word of mouth, straight to the ears of their audience. Later men created alphabets and writing and other means by which they could set down their tales at one time, and their audience could take it up later on.

The storyteller has only the one chance to share his tale, and that is when his audience is before him, and when they want to hear it. He must be ready to tell it, too. This means the hour depends on both. Tradition holds that tales were on the whole told at day’s end, to catch up on the news of the day, make ready for tomorrow, or while away the hours too soon to sleep and too late to venture far from the fire into the savage darkness. Tales might also be told after any meal, in the sleepy hour that attends a full belly.

The writer on the other hand can choose his own hours, even as his readers can choose theirs. This raises the questions, When is the best time for you to write? And does it make a difference?

Personal History

When I was young and not yet full grown, I did my writing at night. Sometimes I worked far after dark, almost till dawn. This is not uncommon for youths of that age, when hormones make us all but nocturnal beasts. Then I grew into manhood and I found I was most productive when I wrote first thing in the morning for a few hours. But this year I find myself writing mostly at night once more.

My first years of writing saw me writing with pen on paper. Then I got a computer and in time I composed on keyboard. But this year I have gone back to writing with pen on paper.

I did not want to pick up a pen again. Paper-making is a toxic industry to land and water and tree and the men who work in it; now that we are free to use electrons end-to-end, it makes more sense to do so, and compose on a very-low-power device such as my Dana From Alphasmart, rather than waste the paper.

But I write better when I write with a pen. I might some day try a tablet computer rather than paper, but I wonder if the saving in paper justifies the use of electrons to power a strong tablet and its active screen.

Night & Day

My purpose in posting this has less to do with materials and more to do with time. Should we write by dawn, by noon, or by night?

Those who write the first thing in the day say it boosts their production and is most conducive to long term writing habits. It’s easier to write every day when you get it out of the way first thing. And writing every day is one of the great bits of wisdom the masters give the students of the craft.

Those who write by noon may be the most anchored in the doings of the day, for they have dealt with the world already for some hours, and the bustle of the day’s work swarms round them like flies. But this hour is most prone to interruptions and distractions of all kinds, and it takes a great discipline, or some secluded writing den to hide in, to make the practice work.

And for those of us who tell of Eartherea in all her fabled and imaginary lands, the pen picked up in dead of night when the air is breathed with a billion dreams, has much to recommend it.

I know the tale I am now spinning about the boy who didn’t grow up, is better when I set it down by darkness. I can feel it is so. There’s no way to prove it, of course. But I feel sure enough of it that I will go on doing so.

So for all my fellow talesmen who walk the marches of Eartherea, I can give you these words of counsel:

• Write at dawn if you need to make it a habit
• Write at dark if you dare risk a loss of wordage for a gain in fire and enchantment
• Use a pen and draw your words upon the page if you would invite your other, deeper self to join in.

(Composed with pen on paper Thursday 14 February 2008)