The joys of the nightwriter are various: the quietude of the midnight hour; a slow glass of wine; soft jazz the radio; the gifts of the subconscious bubbling up, unbidden, while all the waking world’s asleep.

When I get busy with work, the way I am now, the only writing I do is drafting, and I do it just before bed. My requirement is a new sentence each night (as that which we don’t quit, I’ve found, eventually gets finished). But I usually wind up writing more, and now, a week or so into a new story, I tend to look up suddenly and realize an hour or more has passed–and tomorrow morning is giving me that sort of pissy look that says, “Really? Again?”

It’s a bit of a vicious cycle, though, because when the next night rolls around, I’m ready to go back to that strange place that only exists between the covers of this journal. So I crack it open and read the last entry.

Who wrote it? Who knows? And who knows where it will go tonight?

Many are the writers who love the early morning hours, the deep stillness of the dark before day. But if you are a nightwriter, a magic carpet appears around ten o’clock at night, and you can ride it anywhere.