NaNoWriMo is like a fairy tale, and there are some scary fairy tales out there.

After 7 days of writing, I am 11010 words  into my National Novel Writing Month project. I’ve learned some things about myself in that time. Mostly, I’ve learned that I can’t really write for Nanowrimo until it’s past my bedtime.

Example: I spent a good part of the day on Friday trying to write my 1600+ words so that I could have the evening free. I think I might have squeezed out about 300 words. As soon as the clock struck midnight, I became a rampaging word machine. This happens every night, like one of the Grimms’ more sadistic fairy tales. I’m tired. I want to go to sleep. I’ve spent four hours trying – and failing – to focus on writing. Then – bong, bong, bong – it’s midnight and I can’t stop typing.

This sounds like a good thing and it can be, but remember in the original “Snow White?” (Not the Disney version, the real one that medieval people used to terrify  their children back when cable and the Paranormal movies didn’t exist .) The evil queen didn’t – oops – accidentally fall off a cliff in that version. No. That was too humane. She was the entertainment at Snow White’s wedding reception. The dwarves and the good people of the kingdom put a pair of red hot iron shoes on her feet and made her dance until she fell down dead.

This is kind of what my post-midnight writing is like (without the torture and death and dwarves.) I’m exhausted. I can see that I’m not writing good stuff. But I can’t stop until my eyes start closing all by themselves. It’s weird, because when I’m writing what I consider to be my “serious” writing, my best work happens between 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. I do revisions  and careful, slow writing then. But when it comes to inventing bizarre plot points and to  spitting words out at a furious rate, I must need to be half-asleep. Possibly my internal editor is no longer functioning at 1 a.m. Who knows?

It’s kind of fun to know that different times of the day are good for different kinds of writing.