On the Jukebox: "Come Away With Me" by Norah Jones
Mood: Annoyed to be awake in the middle of the night
Quote: "To sleep perchance to dream..." Willyboy the Bard
Flair: The Wall
I hate insomnia! But in all honesty I shouldn't be complaining about this particular case. I have been staring at the ceiling in my bedroom for the past three hours and decided enough is enough. So I got up and came down to the basement to cure the insomnia. I figure writing this entry will distract me enough that maybe I can go back to sleep. What is it that keeps me up? Well, in the past it used to be the dread of having to wake up and go to work at my nightmare of a job (it seemed much more efficient not to fall asleep thus avoiding having to wake up...)
What's keeping me up at the moment? Too much information for my story that I can't type fast enough. Yesterday was uber productive. I managed to whip out a Blog entry and an impressive 19 3/4ths pages despite rolling out of bed around 9AM, taking a two hour lunch break, and talking on the phone for another hour. I'm on a roll and that's great...except it's hard to turn it off when bedtime comes around. So I stared at my ceiling from 9:45PM (trying to catch up on sleep since I stayed up on purpose until 4AM the other night) until I fell asleep around 10:38PM and then my eyes flew open around 1:53AM and I've been up ever since. I'm very annoyed.
Don't get me wrong - I love my characters, well most of them. (I was never very fond of Danielle, Beacon, or Justin...)But I hate that they wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me stupid things. Was it necessary for me to know that Lindsey's snoring keeps Dom up at night? Not at all! Thanks so much for sharing Dom! As a general rule the only characters allowed to bother me after hours are Simon, Jerusha, Tamsin, and Moroni. The others know I will kill them off in the book if they make a habit of disturbing my 'me' time.
Of the fab four, at least Simon has the courtesy to apologize for the inconvenient timing but he's usually on Central European Time so it's easier to forgive him because he's probably checking in on his lunch break like a good son. Jerusha, on the other hand, is oblivious to the fact that I don't care about her latest wardrobe or roommate crisis. Fortunately, she's fairly easy to tune out. All I have to do is reassure her that 1) her roommates all secretly want to be her and 2) she wears clothes so well that she could make a burlap sack the new little black dress. Then I gradually am lulled back to sleep by her endless descriptions of shoe options for said burlap sack.
I like to sleep. I'm good at it and try to get 8 1/2 to 9 hours every night so that I'm nice to real people. Yeah, I really love to sleep. I especially like dreaming. It's a great way to replenish my creativity. What's a girl to do when the thing she uses her creativity for is the very thing depriving her of sleep? Is it a curse or a blessing - tough call! When Grant's alarm goes off around 5:30ish I wake up enough to control my dreaming. You've probably heard of the lucid dreaming technique. About twenty years ago I read a book called 'How to Write in Your Sleep' (or something like that) and have been using the technique ever since.
The time between when Grant gets up and when he leaves the house I flip the switch and go into lucid writing mode. That's when I invite my characters to update me on the latest plot developments and then I do a few scenarios until I find the option I like best. For example, for Book 2 I asked Jerusha and Alex to tell me how they were reunited after their long estrangement. Each told me a different story. I didn't like either one, so I asked if anyone else could tell me what really happened. I was surprised by the character who knew the real answer. So you see, sleep really is necessary in order not to have writer's block.
I can't function without sleep and my work always suffers. At the moment I have the next 4 chapters of my book fairly fleshed out in my head but can't get them onto paper. It's irritating because that's the reason I'm too distracted to sleep. I'm also too incoherent to write. I don't even want to read this post later because I'm sure it's a rambling mess. The great news is my eyes are starting to feel blurry so maybe I can sleep soon. I'm going to go upstairs and try. Know what's really funny about this whole thing? The book is called Ethereal Dreamer, that pretty much implies that someone gets sleep and is a beautiful dreamer. I guess we know now with complete certainty that I am not Jerusha (I told you before that I am Tamsin - who also suffers from insomnia!) BTW, Princess Poutypants , the giraffe print ponyhair heels would look fabulous with the burlap sack. Now shut up or you won't live to see Book 3!
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