Sleeping and Writing

After spending the last couple of months in a writing wasteland, my creative juices have once more began to flow. The first result is that I actually see the end of a story on the horizon (of the 10 or so which I have tried, The Shootist Disarmed percolated to bottom of my mind and closest to the spigot of exit).

The second result is that I am once more having trouble falling asleep at night. This always happens, as writing always makes my mind more active. So whenever I am trying to fall asleep, it becomes much to easy to plan what is happening in a story, to think about settings for a scene, to run dialog in my mind, to gnaw at problems that need to be solved. And since I am usually a slow writer, even when in a groove, this can go on night after night for the same scenes.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why I go into a slump between stories. Maybe my body lowers my creativity, at times, almost as a health check, in order to force me to catch up on my sleep. Or maybe not, but I think I will use it for an excuse when I next go into a slump.