What is the "morning writing effect?"

LesFewer

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"Ericsson 1993 notes that many major writers or researchers prioritized writing by making it the first activity of their day, often getting up early in the morning. This is based largely on writers anecdotally reporting they write best first thing early in the morning, apparently even if they are not morning people, although there is some additional survey/software-logging evidence of morning writing being effective. I compile all the anecdotes of writers discussing their writing times I have come across thus far. Do they, and why?

"The best data on sustained intellectual activity comes from financially independent authors. While completing a novel famous authors tend to write only for 4 hr during the morning, leaving the rest of the day for rest and recuperation."

https://www.gwern.net/Morning-writing

Article I found in my news feed. Do you find this to be true with your writing?
 

Woollybear

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Yes. Definitely. I cannot make the words make sense later in the day.

I do not get four hours though, and I still write later in the day, just to get more story bones in place, but things are clearest in the morning.

They flow. Like, I can tell if words are working, in the morning. Later I am second guessing everything. My brain is too full of accumulated garbage later in the day.

Oh. Also, coffee.
 
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Ari Meermans

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I think it depends on the writer and their circumstances. No matter how early or how quietly I get up in the morning the whole household follows within 15 minutes. But, if I wait until late night when they're all exhausted and sound asleep, I can write happily and productively for hours undisturbed.
 
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Kjbartolotta

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Neal Stephenson put it best that he writes first thing because "There's nothing for me to get angry about".

Good advice, wish I could follow it on days like this. My morning bus rides have been a godsend, because I leave fairly early, and am stuck with nothing to distract me for just long enough to get my flow on, provided I don't micronap on the bus ride home I usually get a second decent chunk done. But if I don't start the day with some werds, I can't jump back in in the evening.

I wish I could still write late at night. Very few downsides to my insomnia becoming more manageable, but that is one of them.
 
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Maryn

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For me, it's a factor of age. As a young adult, I was fully creative and sufficiently energetic to write at night, sometimes really late, and still managed to drag myself to work or get up when the babies did.

By my mid-forties, my energy flagged and I wasn't imaginative after mid-afternoon. However, my formerly worthless mornings became prime writing time, and I can now write from a half-hour or so after getting up (not necessarily dependent on coffee, for the record) until somebody nags me that it's two o'clock and I'm in my pajamas and haven't had lunch.

Maryn, who's done 1100 words today and it's only 10:30
 

rgroberts

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For me it's the opposite. Maybe it was the years of working third shift, but I write best later at night. Prime writing time for me seems to be about 9 PM to 1 AM, although that flexes a little to the left or the right. But I am definitely not a morning person, and I have puppies who are, so there's not a lot of time that they let me have in the morning. Maybe that'll change when they get older.
 

neandermagnon

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I think it depends on the writer and their circumstances. No matter how early or how quietly I get up in the morning the whole household follows within 15 minutes. But, if I wait until late night when they're all exhausted and sound asleep, I can write happily and productively for hours undisturbed.

I'm the opposite. Getting up early is the only way to be undisturbed. At least most mornings. Occasionally my older daughter gets up at 5am to catch up on homework, but she'll be quietly doing that while I write so it's not that intrusive. I have a 9-5 job so I'm at work when they're at school. The job has to fit with before/after school childcare for my younger daughter so I can only do 9-5.

In the evenings, after I manage to get the kids to bed, no sooner do I start to do anything just for me I fall asleep. So writing first thing in the morning it is...

Going back to the OP's question - I'd say that unless a writer's already successful enough to not need a day job, then the writing's got to be done either before or after the day job and taking care of any family responsibilities you have. There aren't really any other options.
 

Brightdreamer

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I don't trust articles that imply there's only one right way to create. "Write in the morning" may work well for many people, but I've known myself for 43 years, and a morning person I am NOT. I do not wake up early. Even when I can't sleep well and am technically awake, I am not woken up enough to do anything productive (unless staring at the wall in that indeterminate state between waking and sleeping counts as productive.) I can barely function until after breakfast and a shower, and on work mornings that puts me too close to departure time to write. (On non-work mornings, that puts me right about when everyone else is being loud.)
 

Woollybear

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So my "writing" for today has already tailed off, but I realized during that stint that I need to break a chapter, and since this book is alternating PoV I think that means I need to reshuffle all the following chapters and make sure the timeline still works.

I can do that. It's not writing, but it's still in the same general neighborhood. I can do it with a fuzzy head and I think it does need to be done. So, that'll take an hour two.

At 2:00 in the morning when sleep is not happening, sometimes I invite my characters to spend time with me and sometimes they say interesting things. Also not writing, but still useful.
 
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Fuchsia Groan

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I’m a night person. If I have a whole day to write, I like to start in the morning (which for me is 9 or 10 am) just to get the ball rolling. But I’m way more productive from 4 to 9, and often stay up till 1 or 2 when I’m on a roll. My best writing memories involve staying up way too late and being groggy the next morning—a writing hangover, if you will. My dad and sister are similar, both creatives, so I really think some of this is genetic.
 
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Roxxsmom

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Chronotype has a strong genetic component. If getting out of bed at the crack of dawn or before is torture, and if your brain is fogged until the sun has been up for a while, getting up in the morning to write is not feasible.

There's something to be said for writing before everyone else is up and making demands on you, but the same can be said of staying up to write after everyone else has gone to bed and stops distracting you. When I'm personally most productive as a writer (which hasn't been at all lately), it's when my writing time is a reward I give myself at the end of the day, after all the mandatory chores and obligations in my life are met.

No schedule will increase the number of hours there are in a day or decrease one's need for sleep.
 

Miss Vicky

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If I'm home, I do most of my writing/editing late at night when the other people in the house are asleep so I'm not being interrupted by people talking to me and I'm not trying to concentrate over the noise of televisions and background conversations. I also sometimes squeeze short writing/editing sessions into my lunch breaks or the very slow evening hours at work. I'm never alert enough in the early morning to be effective at doing anything that can't be done on auto-pilot.

The downside of writing late at night is that my furry family members are also active at that time and trying to get my attention, but at least they don't watch conservative news programs.
 
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cool pop

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Writing first thing when I get up definitely works for me. My mind is fresh and everything just flows easier. I write throughout the day but I make sure it's the first thing I do in the morning when working on a project. For me, it sets the stage for the rest of the day and brings positive reinforcement to conquer a heavy writing load. Writing first thing makes it easier for me to jump into the work especially if it's a scene I've been dreading to write, etc. It also makes me feel good about myself because I get a lot of work done in the morning so I don't feel like a complete waste for the entire day. I'm one of those writers who feel guilty if I feel like I didn't write enough that day and writing in the mornings makes me feel more accomplished throughout the day. It also helps me to stay on track all day and not get lazy. If I start writing in the mornings, I am more inclined to have a very productive day because the more I sit around not writing, the lazier I become and before I know it, the day is wasted and I'm once again feeling guilty.

Writing in the mornings first thing helps me psychologically, mentally and emotionally.
 
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Silva

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My brain is usually distant and flat feeling in the morning and better suited to passive absorption rather than active effort. It's very rare for me to wake up feeling rested and ready to tackle something that requires mental effort.

However, in the past couple of years, I've noticed that my brain has started to become useful earlier in the day than it used to, and that this correlates with needing to use it earlier in the day than I used to (yay early morning classes, ugh). So it's possible that I could adapt to writing in the morning if it were necessary.
 

Jason

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It’s all bald faced lies I tell you..

Mornings are good for two things and two things only:
1. Sunrises
2. Those who make the coffee

:)

In all honesty, I do find a peaceful quiet am (with my coffee) to be a very soothing and relaxing time before the fervor of the day invaded my brain, and I am probably most lucid then. Sadly, I’m rarely able to find those days lately.
 

Snitchcat

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Paraphrased from Terry Pratchett:

Mornings exist to stop afternoon and night from bumping into each other.

That said, I have no set time for writing, but certainly not in the morning on first waking. The brain adamantly refuses to believe it's morning until after the sun passes 11am.
 

morngnstar

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Absolutely. In the morning I can fully inhabit my story world. After I've accumulated all the thoughts and concerns of the real world, I can think about my story, but I cannot think as my story.
 

neandermagnon

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Chronotype has a strong genetic component. If getting out of bed at the crack of dawn or before is torture, and if your brain is fogged until the sun has been up for a while, getting up in the morning to write is not feasible.

One caveat about the above - if you'd asked me a few years ago if I was a morning or a night person, I'd've said without hesitation that I was a night person and what you describe above is exactly how I felt about mornings. However, I have seasonal affective disorder and since being diagnosed and treated with therapy lamps, I turned into a morning person near enough overnight.

If someone's a night person and totally happy, there's no reason to worry about this. But if someone's a night person and also prone to depression or even just feeling generally crap and never fully awake especially during winter, the genetic difference may actually be a predisposition towards seasonal affective disorder.

Being not fully awake until the afternoon (or never waking up fully) is a symptom of SAD because your body's not getting the light it needs to properly wake up and regulate your melatonin, body clock, etc. The first signs I get of SAD is feeling not properly awake and this feeling can last until the afternoon or last all day and gradually gets worse each day. From there it's a slow descent into depression over a period of weeks. I only was aware that this was the first signs of SAD after being diagnosed. Before, I just kind of accepted that I wasn't a morning person.

SAD isn't on many doctors radars and is commonly misdiagnosed as other mental health issues. The seasonal nature of it isn't always obvious. I haven't suffered from diagnosable clinical depression every single winter. In a lot of years it didn't get bad enough to see a doctor, when it did being fine again by May was put down to the antidepressants working, not the weather. This year I haven't had to use the therapy lamp on that many mornings even though it's already November because summer weather lasted until mid October and since then although it's been cold it's unseasonably bright and we haven't had much rain - other years there may be days and days of cloud and rain so there'll be much less light. Other stress can make the difference between constantly feeling tired and just generally dull, and actual clinical depression. Some degree of feeling crap in winter and crap on rainy days is accepted as normal, so it's hard to know given that we all only have experience of being ourselves, what the difference is between normal "aww, it's raining" feeling dull and the early signs of SAD.

Anyway, that's certainly not to say that everyone who's not a morning person has SAD, I'm just putting the info out there in case it helps anyone now or in the future.
 

thethinker42

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I've never been able to function in the morning, and that didn't change when I went full-time as a writer ten years ago. These days, I get up around 9 or 10, screw off for a while, and try to get my first 1,000 words written by noon or 1. I try to finish the remaining 4,000 before my husband gets home around 4:30, but sometimes it takes me until 6 or 7. Just depends on my mood, how much the current WIP is flowing, etc.

Mornings and I are just not meant to be.
 

WeaselFire

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Sorry, not a morning person. Keep in mind that any opinion about anything is usually wrong. It's only the opinion of the individual with it and, while techniques may very well work for them, they may not for others. Everyone happens to be different. Otherwise, there would only be one book ever written, since it would fit everyone perfectly.

Jeff
 

Polenth

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I have delayed sleep phase syndrome, so I'm asleep in the mornings. But if you change it to ask if I write when I first get up, I don't do that either. I usually do other stuff that needs doing and settle down to write later on once everyone else is asleep. I need things as silent as possible.
 

insolentlad

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I used to do the bulk of my writing in the early morning but I had other matters to attend to during the balance of the day. Now, I still rise at Four AM but use those first couple hours to get all my online stuff done so I can devote the rest of the day to writing and other creativity. Both approaches have worked for me. I will say I can not write late in the evening. Brain fog sets in an hour or two before bedtime and I become useless as a thinker.
 

Harlequin

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I agree with Ari, my writing is dependent on external circumstances.

I can't control when I get to write. It has to happen around the kids.

People who can control their writing schedule with a high degree of reliabilty either dont have small children, or possibly are men who rely on their wives to handle the "family aspect" while they work. I have almost never known it to be the other way around re gender roles.