Even in the advent of winter, even if I’d rather take a nice warm nap. My mind is awash with ideas. Some of them make their way into my books, some make their way into a folder for ideas that I keep for later, and many end up on the cutting room floor of my mind’s eye. (No splinter’s, please!) While I’m constantly sifting through these ideas, the strongest surge of those I’m not actively trying to fit together come as I try to drift off to sleep. I have a very unbalanced sleep schedule, in part from shift work while I was in the Navy, so sleep can come for me at almost any time of day or night. Some, if not most, of my best ideas have come to me in that little window of time between my head hitting the pillow and the last conscious thought I expected to have. I’m not sure if that’s how my muse comes to me, or if that is the only time my subconscious mind is free to shuffle its ideas into my waking mind. Either way, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve had to jump out of bed and write down the awesomeness that comes to me after I’m good and comfy in bed. It used to really bother me, I do like to be comfortable after all, but the ideas I get in that state, the joy they bring me as I feverishly write them down, is well worth the price I pay from a few minutes (or hours) of lost sleep!
I’ve found that I need a specific book just for this, because if I simply write down my ideas on any piece of paper, it’ll eventually disappear into oblivion, and that’s the same as not writing things down at all. It’s so awesome that you seem to be an idea generator though!
I had to collect my random piles of notes into something useful. Now I have them in three word documents. One for the books I’m writing, one for stories I want to write later, and a third for ideas that don’t fit anywhere else. Sometimes I feel like a radio that can’t quite tune in the right station, but still plays some great music.