So I’m curious: how many of you are morning people? Night people? And does this affect your habits? Although I consider myself a morning person, I tend to do my best writing in the afternoon. Definitely not in the evening!
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
I used to be a late night gal, but now “Poof!” I’ve become a morning person . . .
I never imagined I’d get up and work at 5 am most mornings, before I eat breakfast.
Of course, I MUST have my coffee, or my brain would surely fall out of my head.
Not good for my clients, I think . . heh.
I’m definitely a night person, yet I can get up early in the morning and write. I do solitary tasks better in the morning, as I don’t have to use the power of speech so much. Anything that involves me doing complex physical tasks, having a conversation or comprehanding what people are saying to me are best left until after 10am.
I do night duties as part of the voluntary work I do, and I’m more than capable of staying up until about 4am before I have to get some shut-eye.
I’m most productive and creative (and awake) in the mornings. I lose steam around 4 or 5 PM. In college (a long, long, LONG time ago), I wasn’t one of those students pulling all-nighters. I was the one (and still am) waking up at 5 or 6 AM with a spring in her step and a smile on her face.
“I love the morning … The start of each new day…”
Love the picture. And I’m a night person. I would really like to become a morning AND night person..but…I really like to sleep in instead of go to bed early. But I write at night, it sometimes seems impossible to write during the day or morning.
I’m a morning person by nature. However I tend to write in the afternoons for two reasons. The first is because mornings around here during the school year are crazy. The second is I prefer to exercise in the morning and I won’t do that in the afternoon but I will write. Tho’ recently I’ve found out my concept of morning is earlier than most by 9am I consider the morning shot and we’re getting into the day but many still see that as morning, I’ve been going for four hours and they’ ve just gotten started. On good days writing starts about 10am on bad days it’s about 2pm… depends on my energy level and other things I have to do that day.
I am either a night person or an afternoon person — a case could be made either way. My downtime is around dinner time or thereabouts. Back when I was writing fiction, evenings were by far my most productive time, though occasionally I’d take time off work and write in the afternoons. My songwriting has consistently been more likely to turn out well if I write in the late evenings or even after 10 or 11 at night, though there have been a couple of long ones where I wrote pretty much around the clock. It seems sometimes as though the part of my brain I use for writing songs is the same one I use for dreaming, and should be used during a time when I would expect to be dreaming. I hope this helps at least a little.
Nate B.
Hmm … it depends. In the winter I am much more of a night person, but in the summer I seem to be a morning person somehow. It’s also about rhythm for me – so when I was writing my thesis, if I did a string of late nights (friends, gaming, …) then I could totally write at night and that rhythm kept me in its clutches for a long time … but alternatively if I do a couple of early mornings I can then work in the mornings and it’ll stick, and I will need to sleep early and stay in the rhythm. Generally I seem to be a night person in the winter and a morning person in the summer.
I am completely and totally a night person.
I’ve had delayed sleep phase syndrome since adolescence, and I’ve been a “vampire” during school, during summer, while working, while unemployed, while in Ohio, while in the Northwest, while in England… I appear to be stuck with it, and that’s kind of fine with me.
And it’s not just a question of when I sleep. (I could be a “morning person” and my mornings would just be at noon.) I’m most alert and focused at night. When I really need to get things done and pore through words and words and words, mine or someone else’s (I edit), I just stay up ’till five or six.
I’ve always been a morning person, and I’m fortunate to need only about 6 hours sleep so I can still stay up until midnight with my other half. On non-working days I get up about the same time as on working days (6:30) and write until other people appear (the first about 8: my morning-person daughter who reads in bed until she gets hungry).
I am NOT a morning person, in any sense of the idea. I personally think it relates back to when I started school; they had a split session, and I was in the afternoon session. Since then, I’ve never been able to reliably get moving early. I seem to recall being able to get going at any hour before that (but Kathy poo-poo’s the whole idea that 1st grade could have such an effect on a person’s entire life). As for writing, I have no single best time, other than it appears to be when I should be doing something else (kind of like now, when I’m at work and should be paying attention to my job, but there isn’t as much to do today, so I have spare time to fiddle with this).
I’m a night person. For me–an actress–this is a good thing, since theater often requires late-night rehearsals and performances. And I usually do my best writing in bed, at night, as well. That can be a bad thing when I get a good idea and stay up half the night writing!
I am a freakishly morning person (even on weekends!!), and having more tasks I absolutely must accomplish in the morning has definitely impacted my fiction output. But sometimes I get adventurous and stay up superlate to write, which seems to give my work a real adrenaline kick. And the next morning, when I again awaken freakishly early, I give myself a caffeine kick. So it all works out.
If that ever becomes a t-shirt, sign me up! I’m a day person who’d rather be a night person, but my body won’t let me.
hello,
great blog! would you like to add mine to your links, and i’ll do the same with yours?
thanks
hello,
great blog! would you like to add mine to your links, and i’ll do the same with yours?
http://fictional-characters-2.blogspot.com
thanks
I’m very much a night person and far more likely to write (music, at least) late at night than I am first thing in the morning. Of course, the occasional bit of insomnia can help with that.
I’m a night person. I love staying up late into the night, and generally get some great writing or planning done then. However, my best writing, the majority of my writing, has been done during class. I know, I’m a terrible student for it, but I think it has to do with the constant sound around me. My sophomore year in high school I wrote an entire novel pretty much in my history class. I think I managed to get an A in there, too.
The only mornings I see are the ones where I’m still awake from the night before. Seriously – my bedtime ranges from 1am to 5am, and lately it’s been more on the 5am side of things.
In the afternoon is when I do more of the administrative kinds of things – job search, emails, reading and writing blogs, etc. Between 11pm and whenever I go to bed is when I get my serious work done (although sometimes I’ll do a little blogging then, too).
I used to be a night owl, but after so many years as a parent, I became a morning bird
I think I’m diurnal in the sense that foxes are diurnal– which is to say I do best during the hours from about 6-11 Am and 7-12PM. In between, I’m pretty much worthless.
I love that sweatshirt, BTW– and my hair looks about the same!
I’m a night person, often up until three or four in the morning. I’ve been a night person for as long as I can remember.
My husband is a morning person. He gets up an hour or two after I crawl into bed. It makes for an interesting relationship.
I use to try to force myself to go to bed early but it just made me sad.
I find my productivity varies but usually midnight is a peak for me.
Don’t even talk to me in the morning. I’m the grumpiest person you ever saw. There’s nothing I hate more than someone who’s all perky in the morning and expects me to be perky and sociable, ie. my MIL.
P. S. I have the same slippers.
I am as much of a night person as it is possible to be and still have a day job. Have been known to get by on two hours sleep, nap in the early evening, etc. When I am on something reasonably close to normal hours, I am able to push through standard writing after around 6 PM and I become creative and innovative after midnight.
I’m definitely a night person. I hate sunlight, and prefer dark overcast days. The irony is that I can’t stand Vampire stories. When I write (music) it’s usually at night or in the aerly hours of he morning just after midnight, and I’ll usually work well into the next day before going to sleep and then waking up at about 5pm.
When I worked during the day I’d get home and stay up but I couldn’t make it past 11pm as my body would shut down from exhaustion. I def. felt like I was missing out on who I was.
I think the reason I like the night is because it’s so quiet. I prefer silence when I’m at home and there’s none of that during the day so the night is a relief. At home, in the morning I get a little irritated and snappy when the noises start up again or people talk to me which is why I go to sleep then.