Eight Writers on What Time of Day They Write (and Why)

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here.

Kelly Link
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I hate writing so much, when it’s also the thing that I want most to do—it turns out a large piece of this is that I mostly hate writing when I’m attempting to do it between waking up to around 2 PM. For a long time, I thought that real writers settled down to do their work first thing, and so I must be a dilettante not to be able to get anything done without finding it excruciating.

Finally, after lots of experimenting, I’ve realized that before 2 PM I can’t really make much headway, and that at some point between 2 and 3 in the afternoon some little switch in my brain flips, and I can think about narrative. And so now, on days when I’m going to write (including important emails), in the morning I do dishes, play games on my phone, and even watch some TV. From 3 PM to around 1 AM, given the freedom to just write, I can get a lot of work done.

Kevin Barry
First thing in the morning, before I’ve properly woken up, because when I’m still in dreamland I’m not afraid to embarrass myself on the page, and this is critical. When you’re looking back over your work, the emotion to look out for in yourself is SHAME. When you read over a passage you’ve written and feel hot-faced with utter mortification, pay attention—this is where you’re hitting on the good stuff. Cut all the cool-sounding, wise-sounding, impressive-sounding bullshit and go with the truly mortifying stuff. It’s also hugely important for me not go online in the morning—if I slip into that jittery, rabbit-brained, mouth-breather online mode, I just won’t write any useful fiction that day. The internet (miserably) will still exist in the afternoon; just leave it till then.

Mona Awad
When I’m drafting, I always write very early in the morning. For me, it’s the time of day when the critical voices in my head are the quietest and it’s also the time of day when I’m the sharpest as well as the most dreamy, if that makes sense. I’m the most able to render that dreaminess and I’m the most uninhibited. I’ll try to write anywhere from two to seven hours, depending on how much time, faith, and momentum I have that day. Time, faith, and momentum are inextricably tied for me. If I have all three and I’m really on a roll, then I can pretty much fall into the story anytime, day or night. Those are the best seasons. I still look back on them as some of the happiest times in my life.

Cecelia Ahern
I’ve a very structured and disciplined writing routine where I begin a novel in January, I write four days a week from 9 to 6, my book is due May 31st, I edit during the summer, and I publish in the fall. As I write a novel a year this has been my discipline and though it may sound restrictive and non-creative, it feels the exact opposite. I feel very free, and focused, during the hours I have to create. I write longhand, and then when 6pm rings, I’m ready to leave the adventure in my head and face life.

Aysegül Savas
Late morning, once I have set the necessary foundations for writing, by reading for several hours and drinking too much coffee.

Tracy K. Smith
During the school year, I tend to write early in the morning, from 4:30 or 5 AM until 7 AM. With the rest of my family asleep, I feel that my thought process can swell to fill the entire downstairs of our house. And there is something glorious about being able to watch dawn come on, or to write oblivious to daybreak and then suddenly look up to realize it is light outdoors.

Kiese Laymon
Early morning and late at night. I’m not sure about the science of it but I feel like the holes in the screen are bigger early in the morning when I wake up and late before I sleep. I try to write forward at night and morning during the week. I spend all weekend, or as much as possible, revising.

Richard Bausch
I’m quite fortunate in that I have always been able to work in various circumstances. This may be attributable to my having begun while I was in the Air Force, teaching Survival and the use of survival equipment (parachutes, survival kits for fighter jets, sea survival with inflatable rafts, etc.), and living in a barracks among disparate others from far away and often from other countries.

I wrote my first novel, Real Presence, mostly between the hours of midnight and 4 AM, sitting at a big quartermaster’s desk in the dining room of an old converted hunter’s cabin. But I have on many occasions since worked at all the hours: in the mornings, mid-afternoons, evenings, and still, often enough, in the middle of the night.

I have never applied to and never used any kind of artist’s residency or time at a colony or a retreat; I always said that I wanted to write about Life, and in order to do so I felt I needed to be elbow deep in life. But it’s also true that the few times I’ve been isolated by circumstance, as when touring a book or spending a visiting writer appointment at colleges, I’ve actually found it rather difficult to muster the necessary will to write.

Anyway, the door to my studio is always open when I’m working at home on something, and I have no fear of interruption or distraction. Writing is terribly difficult to do well, of course—and I have always found it so, but I work in the faith that the matter of it, whatever any story or novel or poem is built on—none of that ever truly gets lost. If the writing is any good, the deepest aspects of it will be there, even if they are re-surfacing.