A simplified and straightforward methodology that may be used to measure N(4 S) density by TALIF technique in strongly emissive plasmas is presented. The method makes use of the absorption peak intensities instead of the fully integrated absorption line intensity. The use of this method, along with a physics-based fitting/filtering procedure enables strongly reducing the experimental uncertainty and performing measurement even in strongly emitting discharges. After validation, the method was employed to investigate the transients of a strongly emissive pulsed microwave discharge. We especially showed the existence of unexpected increase of N(4 S) density at the early stage of the transition from high-to lowpower phase. The use of a self-consistent quasi-homogenous plasma model taking into account a detailed state-to-state kinetics, enables to attribute this enhancement to surface deexcitation of N(2 D) and N(2 P).