Better Late Than Never

And the latest Akutagawa Prize, a Japanese semiannual award for best literary story published in a magazine or newspaper by an emerging writer, goes to 75-year-old Natusko Kuroda. Yes that's right: she's 75 and an emerging writer. Melville House blogs about it, with a quote from and a photo of our newest intrepid literary idol.

Sleepy Brain

Today I read Roxana Robinson's essay in the New Yorker about how she writes in the morning, maintaining part of her dreamstate from the night before by avoiding noise (even a coffee grinder's noise), news, and conversation prior to writing. She's trained her husband to limit conversation in the morning. She doesn't appear to have kids or she'd know how futile it would be to try and train them to silence.

Yesterday I read the blog by Ellie Robins at Melville House advising writers not to go to sleep till the wee hours as "sleepy brains  think more freely" (which she admits, is true of brains still sleepy after waking up).

Would I like to access this sleepy brain? I would. But I already get up at 5 or 5:30 just to get on with the day and so does the rest of my family. I've tried getting up earlier than that to have some quiet creative time, only to have my husband and kids decide that since I'm up, they'll join me. I try to stay up late at night, but I'm exhausted from being up so early and on the go all day, and I end up falling asleep wherever I am. I do get writing in--in the early afternoon, which no one has ever advised anywhere. But that's when the people in my life are off doing their own things and I can be alone. I'm making it work, but without the bonus of the sleepy brain. (If I use caffeine to stay up late, does that count as sleepy brain?)

Some time in my life I'll have the luxury of trying out the effect of sleepy brain on creativity. It just isn't now.