I find it painful to write at night.  Unless I’m under a deadline and then I’m overcome with a special kind of focus.  In general though, I do find that mornings are the best for my actual writing.

I remember reading an article about determining when your most productive writing time was.  For a week, you write only in the morning.  For another week, you write only in the afternoon.  And for a third week, you write only in the evening.  Then you tabulate how many words were written during those time frames.

When I did that experiment, the morning writing produced much more words than any other time.

The problem is that I work in the morning.  It’s a bit difficult to write at work.

To compensate, I write on the train to work.  In fact, I’ve written most of the past blogs on the commute into work.  The last couple of ones have been written in the evening and it’s like pulling teeth.

Part of the problem is that I have remembered that I’m doing this thirty day trial just before I’m getting ready to go to bed.  So, I’m a bit grumpy to have postpone sleep and get in the blog writing.  And I keep telling myself to write it in the morning next time.  Ugh.

But now, I’m curious.  Is there way to get into a more productive mood regardless of what time I’m writing?

I recently took a class called Dramaturgy and Playwriting with Brian Quirt and one of the exercises he would have us do before we did any “writing” was to spend a few minutes writing about what we were obsessing about that day.  Kind of a mental clearing house or psychic sweeping out of the brain.  I always found that it primed the writing that was to follow.

In fact, I’ve incorporated that into my script writing.  Before I start a session, I try to do a quick take on what I’m obsessing about at the moment.  Of course, it would probably work for any writing, not just script writing.

So, next time I forget to get the blog written in the morning, I will do a quick ”what am I obsessing about” and see if that primes the blogging pump.  Maybe I’ll try it regardless of what time I start writing…  But I’m mostly curious to find out if it can get the writing juices flowing at those times when I feel obligated to write, but don’t feel like writing.

Do you have any preferences for when you write?