When I was younger, I did my best writing at 3am. There was magic in the silence, in the feeling that I was floating alone in a limitless universe, in that middle-of-the-night state of exhausted delirium that got my fingers flying. Perhaps, in that nighttime haze, I briefly stopped taking myself so seriously. It was never a practical system, although doing another degree when my children were tiny and sleepless, I could sometimes alternate writing paragraphs with nursing a waking toddler. Nowadays, I treasure sleep beyond measure, shockingly even more than I treasure creative output. Instead, at any and all times of day, I practice opening the hinges of my brain; I let my eyes glaze over and grab at stray images as they fly past. Sometimes, if I can catch the tail end of a sentence, the rest will come dragging slowly behind.

From the prompt “younger” in 100 Words: the Beauty of Brevity.