I am a perpetual night owl. It's a double-edged sword. My muse awakens around midnight, but it's about the time my brain stops forming cohesive sentences. To write alone, uninterrupted, without a babe on my leg...it's worth the sleep deprivation. But it does catch up with me, and the loss of sleep has hit me hard this week. October overflowed with family and visitors and staying up into the wee hours of the morning. It was worth it, as always, but I stole from the sleep fairy, and now there's H-E-double-hockey-sticks to pay. Mr. J and kids can vouch for me. They've been taking the brunt of my theft.
The other night I went to bed at eleven--Mr. J was knocked flat on his back, shocked. It's like getting the kids in bed by seven. It never happens. But I needed the sleep badly, so there I was, cozy and warm under the covers, the only light coming from the numbers on my clock. Just as I was drifting into that wonderful, fuzzy place where your mind is all mushy but you can kinda, sorta still hear the tree branches scratching against the window, just when I was there...words came streaming through my consciousness. The opening scene of my book played out in my mind--the scene I have worked on approximately 86,493 times re-wrote itself right behind my darkened eyes. And I knew it was good, much better than anything I'd written before, but why--*yawn*--why did it have to come now? It wasn't even midnight yet.
I rolled my tired bones out of bed and typed in the dark on my laptop as hubs moved into REM slumber. I'm glad I did. Even in the light of the day, it's proved to be good stuff. Now, dear Muse, if you could but wake me and tell me exactly what I need to change on page 257, I would be much obliged.
