As I said, I wrapped up my evening at a reasonable hour last night, feeling satisfied about a productive coffeehouse writing session and relaxed after treating myself to a little bedtime reading. I never spend enough time with BOOKS.
I felt myself ready to go to sleep, but decided to try something. I had just been talking with Heather about my tendency to get into a weird, half-asleep nonsense state on some nights; and that women who have shared my bed have occasionally heard me speaking some incredible gibberish when they try to talk to me. I have been noticing lately how similar my “falling asleep” brain feels to my brainstorming, free-associating brain. It’s the same luxurious drift, only the type that I get from sleepiness is much weirder and more potent then when I’m, say, out drinking cocktails with my legal pad. It’s all the same destination, I think – the cave of wonders from which our unconscious emerges.
So this time, I grabbed my legal pad and, while trying to neither rouse myself more awake nor succumb to the sleep completely, I just started free-associating. Naturally, “sleep” was one of the first words. But my eyes drifted past the white stucco on the ceiling, and I wrote “snow”. And as I looked at “snow” and “sleep”, I wrote “hibernate”.
And that took me somewhere very interesting.
As of this morning, I have a new story idea. And I really, really like it. I think it’s strong stuff; if I can write it well. I don’t know when I’ll write it, but the broad outlines are already there; recorded, in slightly languorous letters, on the notepad by my bed.