Writing in the Middle of the Night

Why yes, I AM writing this in the middle of the night.

My brain woke up at 2:15 and before I could stop it, was off thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking . . .

I protested. “Go to sleep. Stop this. You’ve only gotten five hours of sleep!”

Of course that didn’t work.

It wanted to remember the literary highlights of the day before and start to pick apart the knots in the book I’m writing.

“Shhh. No. You can do this in three hours at a normal time.”

It ignored me. You need to send an email to this person. That one needs to see what you’ve seen saying about this. Hey, I’ve got an idea for chapter five, but you ought to . . . 

“Forget the book. If nothing else, let’s pray. It’s cold outside of these covers. And we have to get back to sleep before   . . .  you know . . .  noise starts again . . . ”

Too late.

Who else is up in the middle of the night?

A gentle noise.

The cat was now on to us with a yowl.

I pushed my husband’s back and the non-gentle rumblings drifted away to quiet bliss.

Come on! Look at this parallel. Hey, did you notice this before?

“I’m going to pray now if you won’t let me sleep.”

That kept the brain quiet, oh, maybe two or three rounds of prayer.

You could be praying about the book . . . 

“Great idea! Leave me alone so I can get the rest I need to write well in the morning.”

We argued like this until 3:45. I live in California but we don’t heat our house at night. It was–for us–cold.

When I realized my eyes were no longer clenched shut and I was staring at the ceiling and hearing the trucks on the highway seven blocks away, I realized sleep was not coming back.

Giving Up

So here I am at the keyboard.

I’m wearing slipper socks, exercise pants, my long sleeved warm nightgown, a bulky bathrobe and a wool stocking cap. I’m about to brew hot tea.

I hate to let the brain win, but ideas for how to end chapter five and get a jump on chapter six are stirring.

I think I’ll write that email first . . .

This is the fourth time in the last five days I’ve been up in the middle of the night to write. Frankly, I like it.

I had three emails to read, no one was on Facebook, Twitter was active but dull, my private blog friends were not awake–except Jo in Papua New Guinea, it’s the first time in ages I’ve been able to talk to her on the same day.

Even the cat has given up on demanding food and is curled up next to my warm sleeping husband in that cozy, comfortable bed.

Chapter five will be finished by the time he wakes up and, with any luck, World War I will have started.

There are advantages to writing in the middle of the night.

When I got to the gym at six this week, I’d already written for a couple hours.

When Wednesday got so crazy at work and I just couldn’t go home afterwards and return to the typewriter, I felt better when I remembered I had written for three hours in the middle of the night already.

My friend Robin Jones Gunn used to get up at 3:30 in the morning several days a week when here children were young. She’d brew a pot of tea, belly up to the keyboard and write away. That’s when the Christy Miller series of books were written–very early in the morning.

I used to write in the middle of the night when I had teenagers at home, too. Often, that was the best time to get on our sole computer. The house was quiet–the cat didn’t yowl then–and my brain happily engaged dreaming up stories.

It was a magical time when anything could happen on paper.

Including, I think, good writing in the middle of the night.

Back to the book. How about you? Do much writing really really early in the morning?

Tweetables

Why write in the middle of the night? Click to Tweet

A yowling cat, insomnia and a demanding keyboard Click to Tweet

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