Alice Flaherty, an American neurologist, stated in The Midnight Disease that “writers were not thought to be blocked but straightforwardly dried up”. Well, there are a few ways to overcome writer’s block, unlock creativity, and increase production. There is a primary factor that is deemed important and it’s something we already do every day… sleep! Sleep can welcome the free-flowing stream of ideas. Surprisingly enough, the sleep routines of early risers and late sleepers influence production in different ways.
In accordance to differing wakeup times, there was a review where Maria Popova set out to study the sleep habits of famous authors and to compare the rewards they received to their productivity. Popova turned to biographies, journals, books, and interviews to find her information and found results for thirty-seven writers. She made a visual representation of the author, name, birth date, date they passed away, amount of rewards, and number of pieces produced. Fellow readers were shocked to see where some of their favourite writers fell on the timeline, but simultaneously excited. Some readers thought it was fun to see how their sleep routines compared to the authors’ sleep routines. Some early risers and late sleepers are categorized below:
Early Risers
Sylvia Plath- 4 am
Immanuel Kant- 5 am
Ernest Hemingway- 6 am
Charles Dickens- 7am
Late Sleepers
Stephen King- 8 am
Charles Darwin- 8 am
C.S Lewis- 9 am
Virginia Woolf- 9 am
Gertrude Stein- 10 am
F. Scott Fitzgerald- 11 am
Charles Bukowski- 12 pm
In A Nutshell
Based on Popova’s visual representation of her qualitative data, it shows that early birds received more rewards. I guess the old saying that the “early bird gets the warm” isn’t too far off. Another visible pattern is that the late sleepers produced more work. All in all, it is important to note that there are many factors that precede success and there is always an exception to the rule. The take-home message is that the real secret to literary success is having a schedule, fueling motivation, and practicing consistency. These three things are the major keys to success –Yes, I did just reference DJ Khaled!