Pre-Dawn Writing

If my Facebook Memories feed is anything to go by, November has historically been a crazy writing month for me. Obviously NaNoWriMo plays a part in that, but I also just plain tend to do a lot of writing in the fall.

This month I've been battling both health and editing blues to get progress done on "The Professor and the Siren." I'm not very keen on the editing part of the novel process. My mentor, Regina, claims that it is her favorite part. Me, I don't like nitpicking over what I've already written, so it takes a lot more strength of will to sit down and edit than it does to sit down and write new scenes (well...most of the time.)

This morning I woke up at 5:30 and had trouble sleeping. Part of it was a stuffy nose, and part of it was an idea for the book. Since I'd already planned to rise early to watch "Supergirl" with Nathan before he left for work (it's Superhero CrossoverWeek, doncha know), I decided to get up and pull out the computer.

I actually got through 20 pages of manuscript in about an hour, which wasn't bad at all. (Okay, a bunch of those were title pages. But still!). It was weird being up while it was still pitch black outside, but I turned on the tree lights in the living room and it was quite nice.

Then I started to put breakfast together, and quite confused poor Mateo, who walked out to find - not the black kitchen he was used to - but Mommy! Already awake! Our dog is a creature of extreme habit and anything out of our ordinary routine confuses the heck out of him. He spent several minutes just pacing back and forth around me as he recalibrated his morning brain.

I stayed awake through the "Supergirl" episode (which was really only a crossover in the last three minutes), then gladly fell back asleep for another three hours. I didn't wake again until noon, but I already had the biggest item on my daily agenda crossed off.

I don't know that I would do this regularly, but it is interesting to note that this is, in fact, how our ancesters functioned.