Start at 10.

i've recently been lucky enough to have some time to FIND out when my best writing hours are ... after years of working full time and finding myself doing my writing between the hours of 11pm and 1 am ... left to myself i have found my most productive hours are between 4 pm and 7 pm ... very inconvenient as it is just when kids come home from school ... interesting tho ...

I think it is important to have a time to do your writing. But most of the world is at work at ten of a morning. There are so many things to be doing in the day and the night, aside from working. And people have their times filled. With children, girl or boyfriends, laundretting, making the next days sandwiches, washing hair, cutting the toe nails. Whatever, the world and our time is full of the most important of activities. But the best advice I ever got was from a man who called himself a marxist-lennonist. He worked on a site I was on. He said if you wanted to write then you had to put it on the same level in your life as eating. It had to be something that you starved for. Few of us he said ever put it onto the starvation level, but he says if you do, look upon it as the finest prawn cocktail you ever had. If you manage that then you will tear through your writing. You will wake hungary of a morning. You'll want to be writing like you want that dinner at 12 and that supper at 7. You'll be wanting to get out of the picturehouse just so that you can write on the back of the ticket. Terry, the marxist man, got me thinking. Now whenever I write I have a picture of eating a hotdog after a good game of a saturday. Its the finest image I have.

i write from about 2:30 am till i pass out. most of my hallucinations happen at that time, then the terrible darkness comes.

I don't have any set time that I write. Perhaps I should. But when the urge hits me, I type as quickly as possible. Sometimes I'm out walking when a story line (or a special line) hits me and I keep thinking about it, over and over, and when I return home, I write it down. Like last week I heard two people talking on the street. The only part I clearly heard is one of the people saying, "Get to the point! You draw things out so long." I wrote it down upon my return. If I'm writing horror, nighttime is especially nice. Especially on a full moon. A secret I have to relax my mind is to light a candle and stare at it. I'm starting to babble; time to post this message. Sorry, Tony. :-]

It's definitely true that if you just sit there and go for it then the words pour out. I find that some days I write 2,000 words straight off and other days it's only 200 words - but what comes later as I struggle on through the day is nowhere near as good and I often delete all that stuff the next morning when I read it through. So Iguess I'm saying 'do when the muse takes you' but on the other hand if you don't have a set time each day for the muse to strike then you'll never get it done. Right brain/left brain I guess.

I agree with you one hundred percent, Tony. Cheers.

How can I compete with a guy who has two brains?

I have three brains, but you don't wanna know about that. I usually have ideas when I don't want them. Either on the bus or when I try to get my two hours sleep a night. I just cna't write them down in those moments. In fact most of my stuff is written during the day

Dear Tony I find the best time for writing is when you have just woken up and preferably before you have woken up properly. For this you must have a pen and notebook to hand (under the pillow, under the bed) and preferably an understanding or fast asleep partner or better still not one at all. I find this method especially valuable when I am reworking drafts. If I have a particular problem - a word or line that just won't come right - I try to work it out just before I go to sleep and leave the unconscious mind to do the rest. Sometimes the solution comes to you in the middle of the night so you may have to develop the art of writing in the dark. Magic.

fight the darkness. Avoid The Fall. A moment of clarity taught me this.

I started at ten. That was two years ago and I'm still not famous. Well, not like littlefishbone is. I bet she gets tired of having all those photographers hanging around all day.

indeed ... she is insufferable

avin ad a live reading over the dog n bone I'm afraid I made the insufferable one more so by saying er poem was be''er than anyfin er mother ad ever writ.

yes ... you are Partly To Blame

I get my best inspiration at any time of the day when my daughter stands over me and demands to know, "Is that the best you can do, two sentences in three days?" It works like a charm and I knock off a couple of chapters in no time at all... (then I delete them as rubbish when she's not around).

My cat let's me know when to start. He watches me from atop his perch. Eye's wide that can bore into my soul. He tells me what I most fear. How can he read my mind? Who is he really? My heart pounds with desire to write yet I'm frozen in my chair under the cat's spell. Dare I move? He could cut me to shreds with those evil claws! Finally, he yawns mightily baring those huge fangs and lays his head down for a nap. I'm free! Slowly I creep up the stairs to my writing desk. My fingers tap the keyboard quietly lest I wake the evil one.