The Wee Hours Are For Chumps

Posted by Rick

I keep hearing people talk about “carving out time to write” and, yeah, I can understand that. I can even do it at times. The problem is that these people say it like this: “You have to carve out time to write. You have to get up early and write each morning.”

Thank God for Julie Shigekuni admitting to being a night-writer because I was beginning to despair of ever becoming a published author if early rising writing was going to be a requirement.

It is kind of odd that the only people who insist that you have to write at a certain time are the morning-writers. Those of us who write late at night don’t evangelistically shove their preference down the throats of impressionable students. And mid-day writers? When was the last time you heard one of them spouting the virtues of their chosen heur de plume with the fascist zeal of the morning-writers? (Actually, I’ve never heard anyone say they write best after lunch.)

Nonetheless, today I thought I’d try to do some early writing. I got up at 5:30 and then, at 6:00, I got up again. Here’s what I found. People who get up early and write obviously don’t have three cats who insist on practicing being cats on the hardwood floors in the unholy hours of the morning. (It was like the cast of Riverdance out there!)

Nor do they have a dog who can’t decide which human she wants to be with and, therefore, can’t decide which side of the bedroom door she wants to be on and who, I swear, when she is being indecisive, shakes her body every 3 minutes, and the resultant flapping of skin that can be heard a mile away.

They must not have a spouse who then gets up to see why they are up so early. They must not have email. Or the internet. Of some “Sopaipilla Cheesecake” that their mother-in-law made the other night sitting in the fridge and calling their name. And they probably have a real coffee maker that is on a timer, rather than having to boil water to make coffee in a French press

Yeah, morning writing is for chumps.

So, if you have a minute I’d like to talk to you about Late-Night Writing. Did you know that Late Night Writing died for your sins and has a wonderful plan for your life? Let me tell you…