This post is Filed Under:

Home page Highlights,
Interviews and Columns

Beau Smith-The Nighthawk

by beau Smith

There’s something about writing at night that sets natural with me. I’m groggy in the morning; I normally don’t remember the first twenty minutes that I’m up. I step through the house on instincts and habits. Beth has already left the house for work and Cobb, the dog, doesn’t wake up for another hour or so.

I’ve tried writing early in the morning, but I’ve found that it just doesn’t work for me. Whatever creativity I have still lays sleeping refusing to come out to play. So a lot of mornings, once I sit down at the desk are spent taking care of emails and setting up the stuff that I’ll need for later, reference and steel bottles of water.

The morning Hike Leads To The night Time Write.

My head doesn’t genuinely clear until I’ve had the morning hike and shower, the summer is better than Winter. I’ve never indulged in coffee, it smells bad. soda pop, like whiskey, isn’t made for the morning hours. but once I’ve had that first shower of the day, I’m good to go.

Writing in the afternoon is good, but the phone and the emails ring and ding, taking me away from the keyboard and the pen. I don’t turn on the TV or radio when I write, just like I don’t talk during a movie. like in school, if given the chance, my mind will roam off path if given the opportunity. even if the opportunity is not given, my brain will make a jailbreak on its own.

The Scene Of The Crime

Once in gear, especially those first five pages of a story, I’m like the bear you don’t wanna poke with the stick. I will growl, snap and swat when disturbed from my writing groove, not good to try and kill my groove, depend on me.

Once the sun sets, and the phone no longer rings, my writing room gets warmer and a lot more inviting. None of the flirting. The keyboard genuinely starts to react to my touch and things get good. during the day, the ideas, the lines of dialogue come in bursts and get jotted down in notebooks. At night, they get transformed into sequential tales that finally take form and make best sense, at least to me and hopefully to you.

I recite exchanges of dialogue in the voices of the characters as I write. I laugh when things are funny, I groan when they aren’t. I cuss when my mind runs faster than my fingers can type. I limit my beer intake during writing to three, anything a lot more than that makes me think I’m Hemmingway or Christopher Farnsworth. In the morning review, I find the written words are as empty as the bottles in my trash can.

My writing Cell

I can honestly and without conceit say that my best scripts have been written at night. Although there was the one time that I had a script due by the day’s end, and I had been sidetracked during the day by what I thought at the time was important. Inded up writing the whole script in three hours and getting it in at the last minute. I think it mighta been the rush and urgency, because it ended up being one of my favorite scripts I’ve ever worked on. The editor thought it was really good and the best meant 30 days that I had ever put into a script. I never told him that it was a three-hour job for full pay, but then again, I get paid by the story, not the hour. Nope, I never ‘fessed up to him. I’m not one that likes to pee in the water that others bathe in.

Don’t get me wrong, all this night time writing isn’t an easy walk in the moonlight, it also has it’s dark side. (Yes, writers like low-cost puns.) When I write at night, especially if it goes into the wee hours, I find it very hard to fall asleep once my head hits the pillow. I’m wired and amped up. My brain rebels against my worn out body and doesn’t want the stimulated steamroller to quit rolling. I find that having the weather radio turned on low and reading some very dry, non-fiction will aid me in my quest to let the Sandman win and early round knockout.

I’m sure other writers like the early morning; I know a lot of my artist buddies do. Not me. Doesn’t indicate I can’t, but it’s not what I choose if I don’t have to. Oh, in case you’re wondering, I wrote this column close to midnight and beer free.

From the night shift,

Beau Smith

The flying Fist Ranch

www.flyingfistranch.com