I have been getting up at 4 AM recently. Let me clarify, I have been setting my alarm for 4 AM recently, so that I can write in the morning before going to my day job. I have decided that I'm going to write and be published and I am trying to get up early because I can write better in the early morning while it’s quiet—there are fewer distractions, nobody trying to talk or cook or ask me questions. My brain is not tired from working all day. Four in the morning is a great time for many reasons, but it takes discipline.
This is where I fight with myself a little bit. Early Morning Earnest feels that if he wakes up at this ungodly hour, he deserves to hit the snooze button at least twice. This leaves me getting up at 4:30 AM, which is still a lot of time, but it's not exactly what I was shooting for. Daytime Earnest tends to lose his patience with this. What's the point of waking up early, just to go back to sleep? Of course you deserve kudos for being woken up early—kudos like having your work published and in stores. If you wanted sleep, then you could set the alarm for 4:30. But, with that reasoning we'd be getting up at 5. Daytime Earnest refuses to set the alarm for 3:30 just to give Early Morning Earnest a chance to hit snooze twice, and knowing that twit he'd decide that he was allowed 3 snoozes.
We're still in negotiations.