This was easier, when I was a kid: I got to argue with my parents that I’d go to bed after reading just one more chapter.
Now I have to argue with myself, and it’s a lot more frustrating and slower to write “just one more chapter….”
I have lots of things I need to do today, and not near enough sleep. Because the husbandly alarm clock waits for no writer. But! I got the chapter finished!
What time do you prefer to write? I understand morning people exist; like extroverts, it’s hard to avoid the evidence they’re out there. I’ve even done morning writing myself, though as a habitual swing shifter, my definition of morning and my love’s definition rarely coincide. (Though sometimes I see him get up if I stay up waaaay too late writing just one more chapter!)
Mad Genius Club 
Morning is best for me. Problem is… it’s not just writing that is competing for my time then. I have to prune my “ooh, shiny!” brain’s demands, and that’s the discipline I’m having trouble with.
like Karen, I write in the morning or early afternoon. The trouble for me is that I am pathological about communications, I have to clear my “com log” of email, etc before I can write, or it nags at me like an annoying mother-in-law. By evening I’m wanting to wind down, and any creativity is SHOT. I really should do the coms in the evening, but too many years with the navy and in law enforcement doesn’t let me ignore something I might need to answer.
I generally write in the evening. I can do so earlier but evening works best.
According to studies for someone with a “dolphin brain sleep cycle”, my best hours of productivity should be between 10 and 2. But, my rampant insomnia means I’m still getting up and groggy at that time. So, writing has currently taken a back seat. Maybe when I get that sleep thing sorted I can try and see if the 10-2 thing works for me the way it’s supposed to.
So far, I seem to write in the evenings, probably way too late, which is also how I end up with parts of discarded sentences pasted in the middle of other sentences…
Of course the current wip is stuck tight right now. The female lead works and is off chewing the scenery, but the male lead, I just can’t find his voice. I don’t know if that’s because he doesn’t start with one or I’m just missing whatever his spark is or what yet.
Thinking about it, I suspect part of it is she’s a character I’ve had rolling around in my head for about a year now and had the time to build up why her outer actions don’t quite connect to her apparent motives? Whereas he’s the premise from another character placed in a radically different situation.
Now? Evenings, and often into the early hours. This only works *well* since the kids grew up and my husband retired. before then, I lived in a sleep deprived zombie state, and that I actually did get any writing done I now find inexplicable.
Afternoons. I got into the habit of working on notes, footnotes, and doing archival research in the mornings (because that’s when things were open) and the writing in the afternoon. Now, I have Day Job in the mornings, and write in the afternoons. Or I blog in the mornings and do chores, and write in the afternoon. Unless the Muse is being a [rude word] and I end up writing from morning until exhaustion overcomes inspiration.
Some in the evenings, but family and other commitments tend to be in the evenings.
I’m a non-morning person who writes in the mornings. Not by choice; that’s just how it works, dammit. This requires a lot of staring into (and draining) my coffee cup until the urge to kill everybody wears off. Some of my characters have suffered horrible fates because they insisted on talking to me before 10 AM. (I usually edit out the torn-to-shreds-by-demons parts later.)
I come by it honestly; one of my early memories is of my father staring into his coffee cup and announcing, “Mornings oughta be abolished.”
I usually write in the evenings after work, often staying up way too late.
I’m a night owl. I prefer writing in the middle of the night when its very dark out. That’s also when I’ve typically been working. I worked the graveyard shift, from ’93 to ’00, then the evening shift with some graveyards in from ’00 to ’17. This job is the only one I’ve ever worked since college that is day shift (in two different stints) and that not really by choice so much as my wife and daughter want me home in the evenings/nights as much as possible.