After a long few weeks, and a difficult weekend for my family, last night I found myself cozy and asleep in my own bed. But not for long.

Around four in the morning, I woke up from a vivid dream with my mind racing. This has happened to me several times before, and usually I wait until first thing in the morning to record what goes on in my mind at night. I have a folder on my hard drive reserved for my crazy dream memories that may one day turn into a story. But this was different. I couldn’t go back to sleep. After tossing and turning for over an hour, and knowing that the carpool would sneak up on me soon, I grabbed a pen and a notepad from my bedside table. I scribbled in the dark, words, names, images, phrases. When I finally got it all out, I tossed the paper on the floor and fell immediately back to sleep.

I should be working on a critical plot point in my manuscript-in-progress. My poor characters have been sitting for too many days, stressed, bored and waiting for me to come back to them. And instead I’ve spent the past hour trying to make sense of my own chicken scratch, hoping these ideas won’t be lost forever.

Here’s hoping for a better night’s sleep tonight.