When do you write your best material?

[EmJo21]

When do you write your best material?
I usually write my best pieces when I'm stressed or under a deadline. As silly as it sounds I feel more pressured to focus on my works when there is a deadline, and I write as a stress relief so when I'm stressed I turn my pent up energy into the words I put on paper.

[zeldas_lullaby]

I have a problem--I always want to do physical stuff all day--home improvement, woodworking, cleaning, running errands, etc. And then I do all my writing in the evening/at night, and I'm tired by then! It's like my priorities are out of whack.

Welcome to the forum!

I only have self-imposed deadlines, being a self-published author. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself all the time, though; I guess that's good, that I'm self-motivated!

[moderntimes]

Writing under deadline is old hat for me. When I strung for a newspaper I constantly had to finish my story by deadline or it wouldn't get into the paper, and guess what, I wouldn't get paid!

Later, in my scientific and engineering career, as a documentation consultant and other, I was always writing on deadline due to a shipment or maybe a class I had to teach the next day, all sorts of these things. And so I learned to be productive on deadline.

As a novelist, I'm under lots of pressure now, due to all THREE of my novels having been contracted for publication. So the editing and revisions of these novels, just under a quarter million words, will be hot and busy.

That's when I write my best, under deadline and with some pressure, whether self imposed or from the publisher's deadline.

But hey, if I don't get the book revised and in the lap of the publisher, it won't get printed and it certainly won't get sold.

Even if there's no external deadline I put one on myself -- otherwise I'd never get anything done.

[KS Crooks]

I tend to write best after I've been playing with my youngest child. He is three and I find new ideas come to me while we are at a playground or out for a bike ride. I always keep pen and paper on me to write down new ideas. Once I have the time to type, usually early morning or late at night I write and the ideas from before easily flow into more.

[DATo]

I don't have a "best time to write" necessarily. It's sort of like sleeping when I'm tired or eating when I'm hungry. I sit down with an idea, however lame, and soon I become obsessed with it and the creative juices start to flow.

The hard part is not starting but stopping. One night I had gone to bed and was very tired but my mind latched on to an idea (one of the short stories I have on the forum) and I couldn't sleep till I got up and jotted a few notes down about it. Well, one thing led to another and I wound up writing all night to get the first draft. Went to bed again at 4 AM. Luckily I didn't have to go to work the next day. Anyway, that's how what I consider my better stories are born, not that any of them are worth a crap mind you, just the less crappy ones.

[rssllue]

I usually write best later in the evening for some reason. I also do my best work when I have some form of deadline imposed upon me. It really tends to help my focus when I know that I have to get it done by a set time.

[moderntimes]

Having an irregular schedule nowadays, I write in fits and spurts, and there is no specific time I prefer.

When I was working full time, I'd get home, have a little snack, then write for 2-3 hours. That really takes concentration if you're doing the 40hr professional workday before this, and my work as an engineering specifications consultant (glorified tech writer) for oil exploration firms isn't a rest-easy type of day job either. Friends would ask how I could stand to even look at a computer evenings after being tied to one all day, and I'd just shrug. Those little shoemaker elves just aren't gonna do the writing for me, hey?

[Cee-Jay Aurinko]

In the middle of the night, when I wake up. For twenty minutes or so after I open my eyes, words come from someone that can't possibly be my own head.

[zeldas_lullaby]

Like some of you are saying, I woke up once at 5:00 in the morning and wrote a great scene that I'd dreamt up right before falling asleep, and then I went back to bed. When I woke up (for real) and read it, I laughed all day.

[rssllue]

Like some of you are saying, I woke up once at 5:00 in the morning and wrote a great scene that I'd dreamt up right before falling asleep, and then I went back to bed. When I woke up (for real) and read it, I laughed all day.

That was me.

[Cee-Jay Aurinko]

@zeldas-lullaby

It looks weird later on, doesn't it? Sometimes I can't even remember coming up with half the stuff.

[zeldas_lullaby]

Hey, it's even more fun with me, because I take Ambien--a powerful sleeping medicine--and I keep doing stuff before it kicks in, even after it kicks in. It's too funny. My weird side comes out and I just start spouting off about oddball stuff.

I'm curious, though, Leon; do you think you might be channelling your subconscious mind? Because there are a few things that can keep us from only hearing the conscious mind. The conscious mind jabbers on incessantly, but there are ways to bypass it. One is sleep, which is why we dream--that's usually subconscious. Another way to bypass the conscious mind is to be exhausted. I used to notice about myself that if I was conked out, then I'd become mildly psychic. My conscious mind was so tired that it just shut down, letting in intuitive knowledge. Another way to bypass the conscious mind is by snapping yourself into the moment. I was at a festival yesterday, trying to win my dad a Road Atlas. The spinner suddenly clanged a really loud cowbell ("More cowbell!") and it made me jump. And the number eight (out of 120) came into my head, and I put the dime there and won my dad the book, with my third dime.

Anyways, I think that's what you're doing, writing stuff that you don't recognize later, in the middle of the night.

[moderntimes]

Like some of you are saying, I woke up once at 5:00 in the morning and wrote a great scene that I'd dreamt up right before falling asleep, and then I went back to bed. When I woke up (for real) and read it, I laughed all day.

There's an old and very outdated joke on that topic, I think from Ogden Nash...

A writer dreamt that he'd figured out the real reason for problems between men and women. He woke up in the middle of the night, staggered to his desk, and jotted down the concept, then went back to bed. Next morning and he awoke, and suddenly remembered his dream and that he'd understood the problem about men and women. He went eagerly to his desk to read the final truth, and this is what he saw:

"Higamous hogamous, women are monogamous. Hogamous higamous, men polygamous."

(I told you it was outdated)

[zeldas_lullaby]

Good one, ModernTimes!! That's hilarious.

[Cee-Jay Aurinko]

@zeldas-lullaby

You don't want to get me started on this stuff. I think my subconscious is exactly where those words come from. Although I don't do it in winter as much (too cold), sometimes as soon as I open my eyes, I open my laptop, and start firing away, writing whatever comes into my mind. Those sentences look really eery. And being scifi/fantasy minded only makes matters worse. Dreaming about snakes as large as skyscrapers can really freak a guy out. Heck, sometimes I think my dreams are some kind of premonition. Sometimes I'm too afraid to even write from this "subconscious" place.

Do I think I may be psychic? Not really. But boy oh boy, do I have a freaky intuition. When I'm not reading, I tend to listen to the radio a lot. Sometimes a song pops into my head, and right then, it plays on the radio. As for the snake dreaming... Usually when I dream about them, my luck turns sour. Glad that for the past three months I haven't dreamt about giant snakes.