I’m a morning person, so, of course I’m a morning writer. The words just come easier before noon than after. Most write-ins of my writing group are in the evening. If I don’t set too high an expectation for myself, I can enjoy a late night write-in, especially when there is a virtual option. It’s much easier to join a zoom call than it is to go out to sit at a library in the evening.
I’m uncomfortable relying on a late night writing session to get my word count for the day. During NaNoWriMo, I was trying to have at least eight 5K days. I did pretty well with an afternoon write-in. I felt a little uncomfortable not getting over half of my needed words in the morning, but since the weather was nice, I took a long walk and then did a little gardening and picking up leaves. Since the afternoon write-in was a series of fifteen minute word-wars—where we write without talking and see who has the most words. I did four of these and with the writing I had done after lunch before the write-in started, I had 5,004 words for the day.
Since I’m a morning person, I was struggling to get my 5K on a day that I was nearing the ending of book five in my French series. I finally concluded that I didn’t need to finish it in the evening, or even finish it on a 5K day. I have two main characters and I wrote the ending for one of them, but the other one was trickier. I really wanted to go back to the beginning and see what I needed to echo, as well as think a bit about where the next book starts (besides Cleveland.) So, I finished my writing for the day without finishing the novel. Since I often feel a little sad when I finish a first draft, that could be a good thing overall.