One of the best time for me to work out plot problems is as I’m drifting off to sleep, or in the middle of the night, after I’ve gotten up to go to the bathroom. Unlike normal people who stumble out of bed, go pee, stumble back to bed and are instantly asleep (ha! yes, I just called my husband “normal” for the first time!), I fully wake up any time I have to get out of bed. And I drink a lot of tea, so I have 1-3 times a night to work out plot issues.
Some people I know don’t “allow” themselves to think about their books in bed because then they will never fall asleep and the next thing you know, they’re up at 2am writing. This never happens to me. I’m sorry, but getting my butt in the chair during the day is challenging enough. There is just no way I’m going to crawl out of a warm soft bed and go sit in my freezing office to write crap that I’ll have to scrap the next day anyway because I was asleep when I wrote it.
My other good problem solving times are in the shower and on solitary walks. What about you? When do you plot? Do you write in the middle of the night? Is it good?
I can’t believe it still filtered the word after I changed the settings. It’s that event when two cars collide. Sorry. I will never leave a comment from this computer again.
Ooops. That last parenthetical said ‘no s yet’ but I sent it from my kid’s computer and cybersitter deleted the word . Grrr…I think I need to change the filter settings.
I often plot and develop characters when I’m going laundry, dishes, and other household chores (and no, they aren’t all dirty). I write from 10 pm until my eyes refuse to focus, because really, my only other choice is to wait a few more years for my kids to grow up and that will take too long for my mental health. I’d rather write during the day because yes, some of what I write in the wee hours is crap, but sometimes not and I’d rather write and have to delete some of it later than not write at all.
The shower works for me too, and when I’m driving (no s yet). Solitary walks sound wonderful, I wish I could remember what those are. Oh yeah, it’s that thing I did before I had kids.
I can’t write anything worthwhile in the middle of the night either, Joelle. However, some of my best ideas come to me during the first few seconds when I wake up…a plot point, or sometimes a few lines of poetry. By the way, maybe you should stop drinking so much tea late at night…?!