A Virtuous Morning

I write at night.

Over the years reading often inane posts about writing practice on the lovely Internet, I've noticed fewer people extol the virtues of writing at night. I know lots of people do it simply from talking to other writers face to face (something we ought to do more of), but the column inches are devoted to the idyllic, quiet, writerly morning.

So here I find myself, by way of some extremely convoluted circumstances involving a script and a lot design documentation, awake at 4 a.m. in the morning. Perfect writing hours!

The usual line would be that there is perfect quiet. There are no distractions. We can sit before the bustle of the day and create. All of this is undoubtedly true. It is, indeed, even in metro Vancouver, quiet at four in the morning.

I have been up at four in the morning before--many times--because I'm usually a late night, late rising kind of writer. The other kind. The altogether more common kind who perhaps doesn't write moving literary fiction about cloudy sunrises. (I do have cloudy sunsets. Lots of those.)

And I find myself, in the quiet, wondering why I am unable to do anything more than a blog post (take that, blog guilt!) in the midst of this idyllic writing espace.

The answer has to do with alcohol.

Now, I don't drink, but pretend for a moment that there was a party last night and everyone who's anyone was there. Many things get said and thought and often not remembered, and then everyone goes deeply to sleep and (barely) wakes up for work the next morning. The party is not a quiet experience, nor is it very given to composition.

But for me--and I'm going to be very audacious here and speak for all the night-owl writers--that "party time" between, say, 8:30 p.m. and 3 a.m. is the ideal hour for writing. Which is why I never go to any parties. That and the not drinking.

Part of it is that, because everyone else is at the parties, that time actually becomes pretty quiet and uninterrupted. But it's actually about sleep.

Sitting here, writing this and thinking about putting on a pot of tea, I know I will have to get up and go to a meeting in several hours. Fine--plenty of uninterrupted idyllic sunrise morning time. But no chance to sleep it off.

Assume, then, as I think many of us in the know can, that writing brings a kind of drunkenness of its own. A fascination with the stupider details of one's own thoughts. Occasionally loud and unmitigated noises. A hangover of the "Oh God did I really do that last night?" variety. Creation is not a virtuous process. Good villains are quite at odds with still sunrises. I suppose if one is writing morality tales, then mornings might work. For stories of the night, some life is necessary.

There is something refreshing this morning about the world replenishing itself, being reborn. I am not, however, in the process of replenishing the world. The idyllic mornings, at least in my experience, are a myth. Though I'm sure it's true for some, my process involves a lot of loud music and occasionally ill-advised dancing. A lot of yelling across rooms and gesticulating wildly.

Separation, I think we can all agree, is essential.

For the same reason I don't show up to work drunk, I don't show up to work after writing. I mean, can you imagine the conversations about double-meaning and wordplay? About the correct balance of '80s rock played over the composition of a given chapter?

So here I am in the morning, with nothing to do but sit in the quiet and wonder where all the fun has gone. I missed the party last night, and the sunrise is never a good thing.