Plagued with inspiration right before bed? Me too!

What do you do? You have gone through your nighttime routine, you’ve wound down for the night, the dogs are asleep, and you are close behind. Everything is silent, soft, and you feel yourself slowly fading into the land of dreams… then it hits you. Inspiration hits you with all the force of a semi-truck and steamrolls right over those sleepy thoughts like smoke. In this instance, you know, if you don’t roll over and grab your phone, your pen, or even reach for your computer, you will lose it- but tomorrow you have work or some other obligation that keeps you from getting up and writing. So, what do you do?

What I have been doing is going to sleep. For weeks, little snippets of ideas have been coming to me right as I transition to the world of dreams, and I let them stew for a moment before I let them go, hoping that in the morning, the thought will still be there. Spoiler Warning!! It never is.

So, I decided to just do it- I charged my Chromebook and set it next to my bed, knowing that I will eventually scroll for hours one of these nights instead of sleeping. I accepted the dangers and allowed myself to fight the laziness to write at least a rough outline of what I was thinking about before succumbing to my dreams.

Guess what? The next morning, I looked at it as if I were possessed by some kind of demented alien from outer space, with no recollection of actually doing it. But the words still resonated with me, and though it would not make any sense for where I currently am in my second novel, it is a nice addition for later down the line.

Sometimes, things don’t happen in chronological order or at all. Like Doctor Who or Alice in Wonderland, who famously went through portals into other worlds and dealt with topsy-turvy adventures, we also need to go on the same adventures sometimes. We have to allow ourselves to be brilliant, to get these ideas out into the world, because you never know what you might do or change by doing so!

Would you take the opportunity for inspiration even though it is at an inopportune time? How would you handle it?

Talk to you all next week!