Cinderelly, Cinderelly

April 20, 2015 11:27 AM

I like to write and I want to do it more, but I only seem to be able to get into the "zone" after around midnight. Is this something you've experienced? Can I rewire my brain?

I've had this problem since high school. I only got through college by scheduling as many afternoon classes as possible and writing nearly all of my papers between the hours of 11:30 pm and 3:00 am. For the last few years I've been working normal office hours, which makes this schedule impossible.

When I do, on occasion, stay up late to write or work on some creative project, I'm wired for hours afterwards. If I try to go to bed I just lie awake, my mind racing, thinking of new ideas and ways I could improve whatever I was working on. I would love to be able to enter this kind of groove during more convenient hours, but I have no idea how to do that.

I have ADHD tendencies (I was diagnosed with ADD when I was a Discipline Problem back in first or second grade, but only briefly treated) which I can usually control, but they manifest themselves whenever I do something that requires sustained creativity. If I have some music going I can focus on dull, repetitive tasks like data entry or reformatting work for hours on end (and tbh I rather enjoy it). But if I've got to write a long email to a client or program some new module, it can sometimes take hours of squeezing out a sentence or two at a time in between compulsive and shameful detours to read some dumb internet thing I don't even care about. For example, I started writing this question three four hours ago.

Does any of this sound like you? How do you deal with it?

posted by theodolite to Health & Fitness (7 answers total)

It's a little touchy-feely, but The Artists's Way's morning pages idea can get you into the flow of writing first thing in the morning. I would strongly suggest that, if you do this, you stay far away from the computer or the television or your phone while doing so, because those are easy distractions.
posted by xingcat at 11:56 AM on April 20, 2015

A while ago I tried out 750 Words, which is sort of a web version of the Morning Pages idea, and I managed to keep up a streak for a good month or two. It was an interesting experiment, but while I was able to churn out three daily pages of head sewage, it was more like ALL WORK AND NO PLAY than the kind of effortless concentration that I can summon late at night.
posted by theodolite at 12:43 PM on April 20, 2015

Hopefully someone will come in here with an actual answer to your question, but here's my story. I also have ADHD and I spent a bunch of years bashing my head against the wall trying to write in the evenings while I was holding full-time normal day jobs, and suffering from the worst writer's block in the world. I basically gave up for a long time and then my life changed for other reasons (I started a PhD program) and I could write from 9-11 am most days, and -ta-da!- writer's block is hardly a thing for me anymore. I mean, a lot of things have changed for me to make this happen but it's also still true that, regardless of what else is going on, by 5 pm or so my creative brain is DEAD and there is no way to wake it up that I have ever found. If I hadn't ended up in the PhD program, I probably would have died of old age thinking that writing was an exhausting slog and I hated it, when the whole time I was just on the wrong schedule.

So....I guess what I'm saying is that, while you wait for other commenters to come in here and give you some magical tips for rewiring yourself, maybe you should also try figure out ways to make your life serve your quirky brain instead of the other way round. Like, maybe have Friday nights be creative nights. Clear your schedule on Saturday and just stay up as late as you want writing and going crazy, and then sleep in as much as you need to the next day. If that works, maybe start taking some vacation days on Fridays and doing a long creative weekend (with a buffer day on Sunday to recover) or see if your boss would agree to let you work Fridays from 12-6 if you made the rest of the hours up over the course of the week.

I mean, again, I know this is the exact opposite of the question you asked, but for me it's been kind of freeing to be like "This is just how my weird ADHD brain works, let's see how I can come up with strategies to accommodate it" instead of feeling like I needed to use sheer force of will to make myself think more like other people.

Medication is also an option, obviously. I can't use it for various stupid reasons but Adderall has changed a lot of lives.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 1:13 PM on April 20, 2015

Is it possible that it is not that you are especially creative or focused at night time, but that you are tired enough that your brain gives up on some sort of anxiety that keeps you from writing at other times? Obviously I am projecting a bit here, but personally I always battle with a little voice in my head that criticises my writing as I am doing it, and exhaustion is one thing that switches that voice off, because I only have enough energy to write OR think about the writing on a meta-level, not both.

If that's your problem too, then um, a little glass of wine achieves the same effect during the daytime hours for some people. Or so I've heard.

But in the longer term, there are more productive ways to deal with anxiety, like therapy, mindfulness, medication, etc.
posted by lollusc at 1:34 PM on April 20, 2015

My oldest son has a lot of issues and has long been a night owl. One of the reasons he likes the night is because it is quiet. Rearranging our lives so our lives are quieter has been helpful to him.
posted by Michele in California at 5:25 PM on April 20, 2015

I am a writer and have experienced similar. For a while, I went to bed around 9 and set an alarm for 3 to get up and write. I don't know if your schedule permits that or not, but it was great, and I got a lot of writing done. What really surprised me was that friends loved that I was doing that and made me music mixes and even got up at the same time so we could write "together" online. I loved that so much--would love to do that again when less tired!
posted by mermaidcafe at 6:52 PM on April 20, 2015

i'm an artist and have had varying levels of career success over the years. i was for years, or convinced myself for years, that i was a night-owl, or night person or could only work when i felt inspired. i would pull all nighters frequently when the 'muse' struck. however, looking down the double barrel of turning 50 in a couple of years and realizing that although i've had some successes it is not enough and i want more in life, career etc. short story long, there really is no good time to work except the time we make for work.

i too have a job, a fairly physical one, that damages my body and drains my soul. i can easily find a million things to distract me. tiredness being the biggest. one thing i've started doing recently though is just fucking working, whether i feel like it or not. i don't wait for inspiration, i don't wait for anything, if it's time to work on MY stuff then it's time to work. i do a little in the mornings, usually just reviewing what i did the night before, or planning which is far more important than we give it credit. then at night, i come home from my job, chill for a bit, eat, take maybe an hour off and then make myself get up and work. i usually allow myself a good two or three hours in the studio and never let myself stay up too late if it will interfere with my job performance the next day and thus cascade into interfering with my art performance the next night. i find that just little bits of actual dedicated work really accomplishes a lot.

i used to hate taking a bath when i was little, it was like pulling teeth to get me n the tub, but once i was in i didn't want to get out. the studio is the same, i make plenty of excuses not to go there but once I'm there i never want to leave. i'm not sure who said this but there's a quote that i'm going to totally butcher "I lead an ordinary life so that my work can be extraordinary" or something like that (it might have been JG Ballard). for me that means get up early, go to my job, come home from work, do my other work and go to bed at a reasonable time. you'll be really surprised at how soon that begins to pay off. i can't afford to stay up late anymore at my age, so i lead a boring life where i'm in the house by dark, happy as a clam doing exactly what it is that i set out to do in life in the first place; and i'm usually asleep no later than 1am. i organize my life to get distractions out of the way and make it easy and pleasant to do the work i do for myself. i find now that the 'zone' for me happens about five or ten minutes after i pick up wherever i left off last time and not at 2 in the morning.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 9:19 PM on April 20, 2015