The Writing Process At Night

Psst...psst...are you awake?

You're in your warm bed and it's freezing cold outside. There's a soft glow reflecting from your ceiling; it's coming from your phone and a strange feeling of acceptance and empowerment washes over you. You try to shut your eyes tight, count sheep or think about tomorrow's work; but nothing's working because now you have ideas burning through your skull that have to leave before you can find peace in a deep slumber.

It's ALL you can focus on. It's ALL you can think about. No matter how important or how trivial your ideas are, they have to be expelled from your head immediately.

How many hours have you already lost thinking about writing iterations of ingenious philosophical passages over and over again. How many hours have you wasted re-analyzing those "philosophical passages" only to realize they aren't actually anything special because all you really did in college was take a few journalism courses and listen to a few Indie bands before your friends did? How much of your original content "feels" original but is a complete ripoff? And more importantly, how much of your original content is actually fresh? And how much of what you write will be a HUGE failure in the minds of many; and are you confident enough in your writing to share what you have to offer in hopes that SOMEONE, ANYONE will LIKE what you have to say before your words are destroyed and set on fire forever?

In all reality, sometimes inspiration comes to those who wait. Sometimes, it shows itself to the "go-getters"; those who are a little TOO ambitious. But more often than not, the magical parts of writing appear like the Tooth Fairy, in the night, when the writer least expects them to arrive. It's a once-in-a-lifetime (or once-in-a-nighttime) moment that a writer must seize; must get on paper (or computer) before falling asleep again and losing it forever.

There's something to be said about finding a dark room to write in. A truly dark room to empty out your ideas; your thoughts; your words and your once-in-a-moment emotions---and sometimes that room is your own bedroom at 3:13 a.m.

And you write all of this to ultimately realize that if you write from your heart you can NEVER write the wrong thing