***This post does not contain spoilers for the movie Coraline but watch it anyways!
This past weekend I made the mistake of watching Coraline while being tired verging on sleep drunkenness (being so tired you start to act super loopy even if you’re sober). Suddenly, a movie I have watched multiple times before became a lot more terror-filled than my mind could comprehend. Scenes and dramatic plot shifts that before were a little creepy caused my body to curl as I continued to watch the movie. This made me wonder how much tiredness affects our physical bodies and how that in turn is transferred into our mental state. I felt that being mentally tired, I had less resistance to fears that I could previously rationalize as just being part of a movie. Without the cognitive strength I possess when fully aware I became provoked to the very fears I already experienced and technically speaking “conquered”.
This moves me to my next point: a lot of writers tend to write at night, which makes sense given our daily academic tasks. I wonder if our minds process things different at night than when our minds are more generally aware. A lot of my deep and emotional writing tends to be written at night when my mind is less preoccupied with daily survival and has time and the lack of mental restraint to dwell in my past. This mental shift could be considered a good thing creatively speaking, it causes me to think about things I may have not during the day, however, if writing in the day versus night produces different types of works then it might make writers avoid writing at certain times if they desire more control of the mindset they write in.
In the future, I want to challenge myself to generate writing solely at night for a week and then write solely during the day and compare what I’ve written, but that will be way after finals week!
I would love to hear what people have to say about this since we all have different writing schedules.
Danielle,
First of all, I’m never too eager to admit this but I love the movie Coraline. It’s spooky, its quirky, and just aesthetically pleasing.
Anyways, I never actually realized that writing during different times of day truly effect ones work. I went back to a few of my poems and realized that I am pretty inconsistent and never truly write at the exact same time or even place for that matter.
I tried remembering where I was and what time of day it was when I wrote each piece and came to the conclusion that my pieces I wrote at night were much more personal compared to the pieces I wrote during the day. Also, the pieces I remember writing in the library were also not very personal compared to the pieces I wrote in my bedroom/home.
It’s truly something I’ve never thought about before and I thank you for bringing it to our attention! Its interesting to think about how time and place can effect our writing, whether it be good or bad!
Bri