When I’m writing, I can spend the entire day trying to get those voices in my head to talk to me, tell me their stories. Whether or not it works, the moment I turn out my light and try to fall asleep, the characters inevitably come out to play.
I’m never sure whether to be delighted or annoyed. My ultimate reaction usually depends on how comfortable I am and how many sleeping cats are pinning me in place. Then there’s the spouse factor: after the final goodnights have been mumbled and we’ve lived in silence for several minutes, it’s just cruel to turn the light back on, no matter how great the dialogue in my head and how convinced I am that I will not remember it in the morning unless I record it right then and there. (Naturally, I still haven’t remembered to stock my flashlight in my nightstand, although I’ve learned never to be without a notebook and a pen. Which is why this whole thing was written in the dark. See?)
Of course, just because I succumb to pressure from my chatty characters or Dolores, my on-board narrator, it does not mean that the words were worth the shuffling and fumbling required to capture them on paper. Even if they are legible (at best, my handwriting is a poor imitation of cursive), when I’m in the zone of near-sleep my ability to judge writing quality is questionable.
Take, for example, the night when I absolutely, positively could not sleep no matter how I tossed and turned. If anything, my desperation only pushed that blissful unconsciousness further away. Finally, I settled into thinking about my book. You see, I had a character to name, and this seemed the perfect time to do so. In my sleep-deprived state, I decided that I wanted something unique, so I reached around for the most beautiful, unusual first name I could find. Once I settled on it, I was so happy that I knew I needed a last name to go with it. And so I thought and thought and finally came up with the perfect companion to that first name. It was so lovely, so wonderful, that I couldn’t wait to assign it to a character the next day. Since this was before I learned to keep a notebook handy, I committed it to memory, rolled over, and promptly fell asleep. When my alarm rang the next morning, I had the nagging thought that I was forgetting something. So I fished around in my memory for a while, and came up with it: the name. Only in daylight did I realize that I had, with no sense of irony whatsoever, named my character Dream McKnight. Sure, the name could work, but it would be the bane of the character’s existence, not something of which she could be proud.
With incidents like that, it’s no wonder I record my nighttime ramblings so reluctantly, even if I’m usually glad that I did so.
Usually when my head hits the pillow, I’m out in about thirty seconds flat. However, there are those rare occasions when I toss and turn and that’s when I totally think about my story and characters and convince myself I’ll remember my brilliant thoughts in the morning. Not! So like you, I scribble in the dark and then hope and pray I can read what I’ve written. For someone who has very neat writing (and is a very nice person, just sayin’) in daylight, my night time writing resembles a foreign language.
Hmm, had to comment just to find out what Avatar I got assigned. Hope it doesn’t have horns!
Am I a toaster?
And Dream McKnight sounds like a dessert you’d get at McDonalds…or maybe its just that its lunchtime and I’m hungry?
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This happens to me with blogging. I can sit at the computer for hours waiting for something to come out, but when I am trying to sleep my brain jumps into action with all the fabulous things I could be writing about. I always mean to write them down, but usually I don’t and in the morning I can’t remember a darn thing.
Robin, I wish I were that way! Instead, I usually spend about 30-45 minutes every night just waiting to fall asleep. It’s a little tiresome — no pun intended. And, no matter your handwriting, I already suspected that you were a nice person. 😉
LOL, Lainey! The avatars are assigned automatically by the program, not by me. As for the character, I have no idea, but a toaster seems as likely as anything. And you’re right — Dream McKnight totally sounds like something you’d get at McDonald’s. It would have whipped cream and/or ice cream in it, I think.
SparklieSunShine, this happens to me with blogging, too! Actually, that’s where the inspiration for this post came from, and why I wrote half of it in the dark, then finished it up and posted it the next morning.
I love some of my middle of the night break throughs. I wake up and look at it thinking “Wa?”
I have a love/hate realationships with “nighttime epiphanies”, as Melissa Blue dubbed them. Like you it depends on my mood and how far away I am from actual sleep. I think I’m more aggravated when I’m unable to sleep period so I figure I might as well use the time wisely. This leads to many amusing things when I read over what I’ve written the previous night. *grin*
Dream McKnight – yep, that just about says it all. It’d take a very intruiging character to pull that off.
It never fails–I have a vivid dream and wake up thinking, “That would be a cool movie/book/whatever,” and the more strongly I feel that, the more ridiculous the whole thing sounds as I try to recall it for my husband.
“So then the guy who was driving turns into this monkey monster, but I know he’s really just angry because the zombies ate his family, and then I was on a roller coaster and I realized that I bought a new car but I couldn’t remember what color it was…” (At which point, my husband starts saying, “No! No! I don’t want to hear your dreams!”)
But it makes perfect sense when you’re dreaming it!
Well, girl, at least you didn’t name an actual human at night. Come to think of it, so often I wake up in the morning filled with relief that the plans I’ve concocted during the wee hours did not come to pass. 🙂
Eileen, if it weren’t so frustrating, it would be amusing, wouldn’t it?
That’s the thing, Soleil. It usually takes me a while to fall asleep, so I start thinking about story lines, etc. in order to entertain myself. Pretty soon I have stuff to write down.
LOL, Katie! I do try not to describe my dreams to people (I have some pretty wacky ones) but sometimes it’s just impossible to resist. And many a book has been spawned by dreams, so they’re worth paying attention to.
True, Heather! But I have given my characters names of famous people, and done it while wide awake. Several times, in fact. I’ve started Googling all my major characters’ names, just in case.