Blog Chain: If It Works for Running...

Fellow writer Bonny asks:

Is there a place you like to write that's extra special? Have you carved out a writing niche? Is there a certain time of day (or night) when the words fall into place, and your brain is focused on nothing but writing?

I've noticed a pattern lately involving my dining room, to whit: I sit at the table and writing solutions come out of thin air. Sometimes they're for the wrong project, but whatever -- solutions are solutions. I was puzzled about why the dining room would be the space that did this, until I remembered: that dining room is where I began writing fiction.

It was summer, hot and sticky. The dining room's on the west side of the house, so it didn't cool down till after dark. Dave worked out of state that summer; one of the ways I occupied myself was to write. I found the words flowed best from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., and soon my waking schedule had shifted.

I went back to a normal schedule when Dave returned. (We'd had uncoordinated schedules before, when I was a baker, but it always sucked to be hours out of sync.) I wrote in the evenings, which was cool during NaNoWriMo, but also meant I was giving up most of the time I had to spend with Dave outside work.

A couple years ago, I went part-time to write in the afternoons, and have slowly been shaving hours and days from my work schedule. And afternoon writing's OK. But it's not optimal -- too many distractions.

So I'm gonna try something new.

Dave and I run. Because summer's so toasty, we recently started waking up early to run. And it's been amazing -- traffic is light, the sun's yet to rise, and at the end of the day we don't have a workout hanging over our heads. Why not try the same thing with writing?

On Wednesday morning, I'm going to get up at 5:00, sit down at my computer, and start writing. I hope to use my sleepiness to enter a writing trance. I may not even write for my current WIP -- may just free-write and see what happens. But who knows? Maybe the words will veer into my WIP. Which would be awesome. I'll just keep typing till Dave's alarm goes off at 6:00, when I'll stop, hit Ctrl+S, and then walk away.

If it works, every day I'll have text I can dive right back into in the afternoon. Or I'll have freed one afternoon hour for reading or research, or one of a bunch of other projects, like preserving the goods from our garden. At any rate, it's worth a shot, right?

So I took the question and then a side-road off the question. Hope you don't mind. :) Cole managed to stay on course before me, and Amanda continues the route next. Stop by their respective haunts to see what they have to say.