Oh sleep,where art thou?

Remember this post about the wonderful sleep I was getting?

Yeah, well that seems to be over.

Sigh.

Not a creature was stirring, not even a writer...

So I haven't been writing much lately.

I've been sleeping.

Something has shifted over the last month and for the first time in ages I have been getting some deliciously wonderful dead-to-the-world never thought it would happen again sleep. The kind where you fall asleep pretty quickly and don't wake up until morning. I have even experienced the elusive eight hour night, almost an urban legend, or at the very least, a suburban rumor.

For the last few years, I have suffered from horrible insomnia which has very very slowly in very very tiny increments gotten better. I went from three hours a night to five and then to a specific ritual of reading until I almost nod off, and still getting up early. I went from the couch back to my bed. I went from being awake several hours in the middle of the night to sleeping through. But until this month, I haven't been able to fall back asleep once awake during the early morning hours.

So the sleeping thing isn't great for the writing, which I normally do during those early morning hours when the house is still dark and quiet and everyone else is sleeping. But oh, the sleep is so good for the spirit! So for now, I'm recharging. And that is the best gift I could imagine giving myself this holiday season.

Write Write Sleep Write

As I mentioned a few days back I am participating in National Novel Writing Month, and by the end of the day I will have 10000 words written towards a 50000 word novel. So far it has been going pretty well, but I can feel myself starting to tire out. They say week two is the hardest and I can see why. I did not take an organized approach, so I am more or less writing free form from an idea in my head. Next year, if I do this again, I plan to work from an outline. I did decide to chunk the writing up in such a way that I would have the option to easily break it up into several short stories if I am unable to tie the theme together towards the end.

I have been getting up extra early, and with my other writing (which includes the piece for my class, the real live actual paying assignment, the blog posts for the retail store, this blog, and the permission slips for the field trips that Girlie seems to be taking on a weekly basis at school) I have been going to bed a little later than usual too. So I am surviving on less than optimal sleep which seems to be a reoccurring theme for me.

Reoccurring enough that my story or novel, if I dare to call it that, is based on a series of people all suffering from insomnia. I figure the sleep deprivation will contribute some very authentic writing. Notice how I combine my research and writing into one task. Brilliant, no?

Anyway, the idea is to take these very different people with the same problem, tell their stories individually, and then weave it all together. Oh, and there is a conspiracy theory pandemic thing too because it turns out the government is actually causing the insomnia, but I am going to wait to write that later in the month when I am really good and exhausted, maybe even slightly delirious.

By my estimates, looks like I should hit that part of the story sometime around Thanksgiving week, when we'll be crammed into a hotel room in Georgia after a cross country flight with the kids. Paranoid dark conspiracy sleep deprivation novel? Yep, I think I'm going to nail it.