Thoughts on the Write All Night experiment

Congrats to Jim and Mike. They didn't make it until dawn, but they were both productive, so I'm calling last night's/this morning's experiment a success. I didn't last as long as they did, but I still got some crucial work done.

Some random thoughts from my end:

• I regularly checked my email (for comments on my posts), my statcounter, and the other participating blogs. That proved a small distraction but a useful one. When my energy dissipated, I'd find Jim's energy still going. Jealousy and fellow-feeling prodded me back to work.
  
• I hadn't been writing in the couple of weeks preceding the experiment (life managed to get in the way), so I faced the double difficulty of not only writing completely counter to my preference (I work best just after waking) but also getting back on the horse. Still, I was so enthused by the prospect of the Write All Night project that I got back into writing relatively easily. Now that Write All Night is over, I feel the fire under me again to work each day. We'll see how long that lasts.
• I usually don't caffinate after mid-afternoon, so the cups of tea made it tough to go to bed at three a.m. After lying there thinking about the novel (and realizing something about a character), I convinced myself that if I didn't fall asleep soon, I'd get back up like Hulk Hogan always managed to do after getting "beat up." (Sorry, I'm channeling Bill Simmons.) But then I felt myself snap awake after drifting off and decided, yes, thankfully, I could fall asleep.
• Waking up this morning was tough, but I felt clearer headed this morning than usual, even if this post doesn't necessarily reflect it. That's a nice change after the last couple of weeks.
• Head over to JPG Writes and One Toe In to see their progress. Mike, as usual, outpaced us, but Jim and I are making ourselves feel better by mercilessly mocking Mike in back-and-forth emails. (Not true; I actually doubt Jim is awake yet.)
  

Write all night update

All quiet on the western front. Distraction-wise, anyway. But I'm writing--in two hours, six-plus pages. And since I haven't written in over two weeks (long story), I'm pleased. I'm amazed I made it this long.

Side note: I got a new laptop in December, and it only came with a trial version of Microsoft Word. And the fucker ended two days ago, so I've had to switch to writing in MS Works Word Processor. It's amazing how much that little difference makes. I'd been so used to the way the screen looked that all these little differences keep catching my eye. But Monday I can buy a cheap version of Word at school and get back to normal.

Back to work. I'm not sure how realistic dawn is. I had to break out the icepack for a jolt.

So much for no interruptions

I'm getting sleepy but hanging in. I'm on my second cup of tea. But it turns out writing at night has its distractions.

1. My next door neighbors. The husband can't smoke inside, so when he goes outside to puff away (where it's 28 effing degrees and "feels like" 17, according to Yahoo@#$% Weather), his friends go with him. Apparently they think it's difficult to be heard on the porch.
   
2. My dog. She's in the other room zonked out, but occasionally she whines in her dreams. It's damn cute and also distracting.
   

Blog, give me the child!

And we're back! Yep, that's right, hiatus over--Saturday night/Sunday morning is the time to write all night. I'll be occasionally posting as long as I can stay awake; JPG, our fearful leader, promises to do so as well.

And to prove it's fate, there will be a lunar eclipse on Saturday. Spooky. And that's the cause of my favorite illustration ever (for today, anyway). Read all the fine print.