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I find it almost impossible to write until the sun has set, maybe I need to move to Alaska for half the year. I sat here all day and tried to write just as I did yesterday; and just like yesterday I couldn't get a damn thing out until the sun was down. I wrote six thousand mangled words between midnight and four am, and I've managed a thousand in the last hour. I'll do that ten fold over before I go to sleep. When do you write? I also need distractions, whether it be a smoke, a song, or posting something random on the FG.

I have trouble coming up with new ideas in the day but I got so I could sit and write for 10 or 12 hours every day. Sometimes 7 days a week. But that's when the story is really under way or if it's flowing well at the start.

I also take breaks every couple of pages and surf around the forums. If I could choose I'd sleep during daylight hours to maximize my creative energy at night.

Whenever the creative urge strikes me... early mornings are best for me... and by early morning I mean early morning. :p

I used to write at the drop of a hat. Especially if I was angry or hurt, it would be cathartic. Maybe that was just me being a brooding teenaged poet back then because I seemed to have gotten away from it.

Now I find my best work comes when I'm pressed for time. If I have to form a letter or an article on an issue, say for the paper or something like that, some instance where I'm on my last hour, that creative flow comes out just like it used to. When that happens it's never a cheap ramble that looks as if I just threw a bunch of words together, the way you might think it would look. It always comes out as something I'm proud of instead.

My ideal writing atmosphere is the library or in a booth at a cafe with rain streaming down the windows and nothing but gray and cold dreariness outside. Music is usually a distraction for me unless it's it's coming from a jukebox in the background or someone's stereo. Although if I were to provide my own background music, it would be Miles Davis or some songs off Chet Baker's "Chet Plays for Lovers."

I have to have a cool new pen too. And a college ruled notebook with cool designs on the cover.

I normally write on my own merit, but Vicodin always brings out some of my best, especially if there's some writer's block going on.

I get mind block and need 2 relax.

No set time but write most after a trip or a failure.

Usually, my inspiration is strongest in the hours between 10pm and 4am. Which can be a pain in the ass. I'll go to bed early so I can get up at 5am for work the next day and my mind is swimming with words and ideas and thoughts. Sometimes I have to turn the light on and write them down on some scrap paper by the bed so I can get some sleep.

If I'm "forcing" my inspiration I'll be found at a coffee house by myself at a table, drinking some illegible form of coffee, pretending to be interested in the daily paper while watching the idiosyncrasies of the people around me.

This may be seem odd, but at times I'll leave my normal self for a time to see things differently. Red lipstick, stiletto heels and a slinky little dress and I'm transported to a person who may write something from a perspective that's entirely shocking and different than I'm used to. To do this, I go to some dirty little thrift store and paw through the clothes like a bag lady.

Dusty little libraries and antique book stores do it for me too. I'll walk in aisle after aisle and drag my fingers along the tops of every book as though I'm picking up little trinkets through osmosis.

Writing is like sex. You have to change the positions sometimes to get where you're going. To feel it new and fresh, or at least differently. Monotony is the writer's Satan.

Images that have jump-started me like a dead car have been:

A hippie holding a flag on the side of the road and shouting pro-war semantics.

Walking in the rain during a thunderstorm watching everyone hustle as though trying to run between the raindrops.

One song played over and over until I'm humming it without even knowing.

I could go on but the smell of ink on paper is calling to me.

I'm extremely lazy, and i also have a fear of the blank page (uh, screen). My blogging is my main outlet but there's a two-week gap between posts ordinarily.

I'm very fond of haiku and once started a bicycle haiku on a cycling forum. It was popular for awhile. Perhaps I should unearth some of those...:yh_think

I used to journal, a lot. And mornings are best. My sister is a novelist. But I don't know if she has a book published yet. She writes very well. Her style is kind of the same style as the guy who wrote "Running With Scissors". As that is how our childhood was.

#i find it easier to write at night when there is less distraction:-6

cinamin;644197 wrote: I used to journal, a lot. And mornings are best. My sister is a novelist. But I don't know if she has a book published yet. She writes very well. Her style is kind of the same style as the guy who wrote "Running With Scissors". As that is how our childhood was.


"Running With Scissors" is an excellent book. Wonderfully disturbing. I actually wrote a sort of prose about reading it. While reading it I kept thinking, "This is someone's life?" Stranger than fiction, that's for sure.