Harnessing the subconscious

What to do with those annoying 5 am thoughts.

Last Friday night, after we’d both returned from work and were relaxing in front of our open fire, a pleasant glass of red in our hands, my husband I congratulated ourselves that the next day was entirely free of commitments. There were no urgent chores to perform, and no obligations to fulfill. Bliss.

Later, as I tried, yet failed, to drift off to sleep, I reassured myself that I had nothing to worry about.  A free Saturday lay ahead, as clean and blank as an empty beach at dawn. A day we could spend pottering to our hearts’ content. But random, intrusive thoughts persisted, until eventually I must have dozed off.

I awoke abruptly several hours later with that annoying busyness in my head that is the curse of all insomniacs. Thoughts and ideas were crashing around, and although I tried to keep my body as rigid as possible to avoid waking my still-sleeping husband, my brain was full of restless movement. Then, out of the chaos, came the opening of my new novel. Fully formed, and, or so it seemed to my semi conscious self, full of the potential that had seemed so elusive whenever I tried to put pen to paper (or in fact finger to keyboard) earlier. There was nothing else for it. I stumbled to my feet in the crepuscular half-light, lurched down the stairs with my laptop clutched under my arm and attempted to capture the words that had come to me earlier before they were engulfed by a surge of domestic trivia.

I don’t know whether my opening paragraph will stand the test of time, but I have finally found a way to start my novel. Hooray! I’ll probably be nodding off by the fire tonight and heading upstairs exhausted at a bedtime more suited to my young grandchildren, but at least I’ve made a start.

I’m sorry this blog is a bit personal, on a site that purports to be about others’ writing techniques, but it was another thing that was hovering in my brain at dawn. For a more objective account of how we can turn our early morning thoughts into writing, please click HERE.