One of the things I find about writing early in the morning is that my focus seems closer. As I stare at a page of type and wait for that first cup of tea to kick in, it feels as though my head has a magnifying glass strapped to it. Maybe this is because I'm still half-asleep at 6.15 and so tend to stare at each sentence much longer than I would ordinarily - still edging out of snooze-mode - but I've found it a productive time in terms of cutting out redundant words and phrases, swapping sentences around, and spilling tea across a paragraph or two to discover a new emphasis in that section of writing.
Sometimes, I work through my scribbled notes of an evening or at the weekend and decide to keep the original version, wondering what on earth I was dreaming about when I deleted a sentence or rephrased it, but on the whole the changes usually stay. Quite often, though, in that first session, I'll notice something about a character's tone or behaviour that will lend itself to other, richer possibilities, which is when I reach out for another notepad to start mapping these possibilities, realising full well that I'm going to be late for work again and that draft #32 can no longer be the final draft.
