I think that the glorious days when I wake up, head buzzing with a story, and spend the morning clicking at the keyboard make up for those other days. The days when on waking I have no feeling for anything; no words have formed themselves in my dozing mind the day is full of endless scrabbelings toward creating fiction. Pecking at flecks like a battery chicken. The page is so white I cannot look at it. I stare out the window, watch documentaries I have already seen twice before, and read the newspaper cover to cover. There is always a reason to go to the shop, but never a reason for character A’s reaction to character C’s transgression.

But, those days when I wake aching for the pen and paper beside my bed, when I have already woken three times to write a sentence or plot idea, my partner asking, “What are you doing?” They are the greatest. When a thousand perfect words pours out like a bucket of butterflies. 

I do have ideas in my sleep. That stage called hypnagogic, where hallucinations and reality blur. You arehalf awake and half asleep. I have woken up with the entire first paragraph of a story in my mind before, the entire plot of another.

 Sleep is so important to me. In the words of Bill Hicks, “I need eight hours a day; ten at night.”