When Your Book Won't Let You Sleep
Last night, at about midnight, I had finished my word count goal for the day. Being exhausted, I found a good stopping point (basically, my forehead hitting the keyboard) and stumbled off to bed, tripping on miscellaneous dogs. I laid down without bothering to take my bra off (very uncomfortable) and settled into what I thought would be a good nights sleep, what with feeling accomplished and all that. My underwire would not allow this, so 15 minutes later I was forced to make the effort to take it off and change into some comfy pjs.
Another 20 minutes later, my eyelids fly open. Truthfully, I am very afraid of things that go bump in the night, and that are capable of hiding under my bed (I really must look into platform beds). Backstory: when 8 yrs old, I convinced my parents to let me stay up and watch an episode of The Outer Limits. It just haaad to be the one with the Bogeyman that pretends to be a stuffed animal hiding under the bed in order to steal little children my age. *Now is more scared of dark* Because of this one traumatic night, every time I watch a scary movie or read a scary book (Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan), I cannot sleep. I get too paranoid. I'm a writer - my imagination goes crazy with anything.
Anyways, so I was thinking about some of the premises of my work in progress, and well, lets just say they're not the most sunny of plots and characters. So, I begin to think about other scary things, like when I went to the movies last week to see a comedy, and the last preview was for a psycho thriller horror thing, and it left me shaking and crying (no, seriously, they freak me out that bad when I'm not prepared for them). So then I try reading some nice chick lit, but to no avail. 4:30 am rolls around, and I am no closer to sleep. Worse, I keep interrupting my chick lit reading with thoughts of "maybe if my main character did this...." or "What if the antagonist said that..."
So now I am here, writing this blog and working on my book. Here is some advice for writers, sleepers with problems, and general populace:
1) If you are Bipolar with a wacked out sleep pattern already, CAFFEINE WILL NOT HELP YOU. Especially if drunk in the late afternoon and you have a chance at falling asleep before 1 am.
2) People DO NOT LIKE IT when you call them because you can't sleep. They don't care - right then they hate you.
3) Pets also do not like you when you are awake late at night, especially cats not declawed. BEWARE THE SLEEP DEPRIVED CAT.
4) PLEASE REFRAIN FROM EATING CAKE late at night. Give it to me instead.
Hi :)
Another terrific blog post.
The bane of a writer: an excellent fertile imagination.
I, too, have insomniac episodes.
*sigh*
You can always call me *wink*
:)
Love from Canada
Rob
xoxo