Gwern looked into the morning writing effect, and I read the post with interest.

I would like to contribute my n=1 randomly uncontrolled study. This very poor quality, woefully underpowered study concludes: the morning writing effect is fake! The evening writing effect is real.

The entire body of research consists of thinking about how many times in the past two months I have gotten up, feeling rested and energetic, and with plenty of time side aside, sat down to write an essay, and discovered that I have nothing to say.

And, how many times I have been struck by an idea that feels alive, sometime between 7pm and 2am.

It happened this morning. I re-arranged my list of hundreds of essay ideas, sorting them by interestingness. I kept my computer offline. An hour set aside, caffeinated, no excuses. No ideas.

Now, it’s 9:30, and I have an early morning tomorrow. Finally I feel like putting words down.

I’ve published 46 posts in the past month, and drafted many more, and the pattern has become very familiar.

In the comments on The Morning Writing Effect, someone on brought up “the idea that writers lie about their morning writing because it makes them sound virtuous.”

But I know that for some people, who aren’t writers, the morning writing effect is real. Some night-owl chronotypes even seem to do their best creative work in the mornings.

Maybe I’m just tired? Does that explain my failure of morning writing? No. Even when I go to bed early, get up early, and fatigue isn’t the problem, I feel like my prime time is usually the second half of the day.

A number of factors could contribute to both the early morning, and evening, writing effects:

• in the morning and evening, we’re less likely to feel like we need to “get to work” on more productive things
• in the morning in evening, we’re more likely to be able to work in solitude for extended stretches of time without being interrupted
• in the morning and evening, our human, urban, and natural environments are quieter

And then there are some factors that are specific to one time or the other:

• in the morning, we might still be in a groggy, dreamy condition
• in the morning, our minds might be more blank
• in the evening, we might have more thoughts and impressions rattling around from the day

For me, I think it’s the last one.

I started an essay five years ago titled The Idea Collider, touched on the topic in Intentional Computing, and have another one in progress called It’s scary that the mind is basically a blender.

When I have a long-running project that I work on every day, I can usually get in the flow, if not in the morning, at least by noon. The ideas are partly there, and mainly what’s needed is to load them back into memory, and go from there.

It’s harder to start from scratch.

I find that when I haven’t been reading, or getting new impressions, I have nothing to say. Perhaps this is the case at multiple scales. (Many things are.)

Or perhaps, I’m way off the mark, because it’s late at night and my brain has shut down.