Queen of the Night
In which The Writer discusses how her energy really seems to be powered by the moon
Sometime in May, I crawled my way into bed at 2:52 just on the wrong side of sober knowing that my alarm would go off at 7:50 that very morning. The day that I was finally ending had started for me at 5:26am. That makes it a 21 hour day, just about.
I hadn’t meant to pull that long a stint. At around 2pm I was ready for bed. I don’t even really know what happened but suddenly it was nearly 2am and the people I was with had finally run out of drinks and cigarettes and a natural close had come to the end of the night. At some point between 4pm and 7pm I had come into my own and was well and truly awake and then it felt like my day had begun.
I have always preferred the dark of night to the early morning light. There are stories told to me by my equally nocturnal father of him staying up with me when I was a baby just watching me and then come 3am each night (or morning) I would just fall asleep. Just like that. I would be out until I guess I was woken up in the morning, or I was hungry or something. I don’t know, the story ends with me falling asleep in the early hours of the morning usually.
It’s a habit I had trained out of me when I was in school, but as I got older, it became harder to implement that thing called a bedtime, so I was left to my own devices. The thinking being I would learn that I can’t do things on minimal sleep if I am choosing to live my life that way.
That is not a lesson I have ever really learned. Don’t get me wrong I understand it in practice, but whereas the hours before 3pm seem to drag on for about 100 hours, the ones that make up the afternoon and evening fly by for me. Even when I have the best of intentions to get an ‘early’ night (we’re still only talking 10pm earliest) I will lose track of time doing something else and it’s nearly the time that I always go to bed anyway.
Generally speaking, I get my 7 hours, but I am very good at getting through the day on less sleep. I’ve done days on 3, I don’t ever advise it, but I have done it.
I can’t lie and say that I have tried to be a morning person. I haven’t. One of the many perks of working from home is that I don’t have to switch on and be a person in the morning. I just have to rock out of bed, turn my laptop on and get to it.
It has also afforded me the chance to switch up my days. I start earlier so that I can finish earlier and therefore can really utilise the fact that I am at my most creative and energetic when the sun starts going down in the winter (aka, 3pm). Does it mean that I send my first emails still rubbing the sleep from my eyes? Yes, yes it does.
I know that there is a school of thought that says that I should use the first hour of my day as a fake commute and fill it with the things that fill my cup so that I can give my best to my day and I am sure that works for some people. But I can’t fill my cup at 8am. I haven’t woken up enough and I would just find the whole thing too distressing because it isn’t working the way that it is ‘supposed’ to. And that would then make the whole thing rather pointless.
Especially when I know that by the time the afternoon rolls around I will actually be at my most creative.
I have talked about it a lot on here, but Writers Hour is like a god send when it comes to me and being able to actually get things down onto the page. Is there one at 8am London time? Yes. But I know without a shadow of a doubt that I would not have the same level of output as I do come 4pm London time. If I remember then I even hit the 9pm one and have a similar level of output.
Most of my ideas come to me in the dying embers of the day. It’s where the ideas for all 3 (yes 3, that number has increased, my brain has no chill) of the stories have come to me under the cover of darkness. When I find myself trying to figure out a particular niggly plot point, I tend to just not actively think about it until the afternoon and then when I do suddenly the road opens itself up to me and I’m there.
Arguably the world that I inhabit is not really set up for someone who is more owl than lark. There is always a lot of focus on making yourself part of the 5am club. There are articles upon articles about how you should exercise early in the morning because otherwise, you spike some hormone or other that disrupts your sleep. People love to tell you that you shouldn’t eat too late because it does…something. How many articles are there in the world that declare the optimum bedtime as gospel and suggest that if you don’t abide by it then you will DIE?
The thing is I know that they exist in excessive amounts because I read them whenever they appear in my atmosphere. There is a part of me that is desperate to be one of those morning folks. It always seems like those people have their shit together. I have no real proof for that.
I also know rationally that it is bullshit. I still get a workout in even if it happens after work. I have read an impressive number of books this year so far despite doing most of it in the early hours of the morning. I’ve written close to 50,000 words over the course of this year, most of it done in PM hours. I also still (usually) get the recommended number of hours for sleep.
I can’t say that I am leaning into my whole nocturnal thing. I’m still bound to the confines of my job and the fact that a lot of my plans take place in the mid morning or early afternoon and so require me to see the morning. What I can say though is that I am no longer allowing myself to make myself feel bad for the fact that I am not that person who is up and at ‘em at 5am and nor will I be. Or rather I could be, but it will be because I’ve not been to bed, not because I’ve willingly woken up at that time…
Jumpin’ Jumpin’
What I’m reading - I have been in the mother of all reading ruts recently. I’m just sitting on two books that are unfinished and I don’t really know why because I am actually enjoying them but they’re…heavy…Anyway, I was getting annoyed at how much I was just not reading and I knew exactly what would fix the issue. Last weekend I read Mr Wrong Number - Lynn Painter and Twisted Love - Ana Huang. Completed both in a matter of hours, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday. Then because I wasn’t quite ready to give up the romance genre just yet I read Second First Impression - Sally Thorne. I’m now working on finishing up my two outstanding books and then, who knows where the wind will take me.
What I’m watching - I can finally watch No Way Home this weekend which is what I’ll be doing. I’ve also been reclaiming my life back now that tennis no longer occupies almost every moment of my day and just dipping in and out of things that I have been watching but not quite binging.
What I’m listening to - On account of the fact that The Summer I Turned Pretty featured a lot of Taylor Swift (and blessedly gave use the Taylor version of This Love) I have been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift this week. I’ll be honest, in the week following the release of Taylor’s Version of 1989 (and Speak Now) please do not speak to me because I will be a mess. So many bangers, so many beautiful lyrics (I would like to listen to You Are In Love without guilt).
Title Inspiration - If you don’t think Queen of the Night - Whitney Houston is a god-tier song then we cannot be friends.