Hitting the Snooze Bar on Brilliance

I take my dreams very seriously. I keep a notepad by the bed so I can write things down that I come up with in my dreams. I came up with the premise for my novel in a dream more than a year ago, and I got up and started writing it.

The other night I had a great idea for a title for the book. It was great. It burst into my head and woke me up from a deep sleep. I groped for the notepad in the dark. It wasn’t there. I lied in the dark and debated on whether I wanted to get out of bed, and out of the snuggly warmth of the bed. I dreaded the cold house around me as I went downstairs to get another note pad. I imagined the cold of the wood floors, as I left my slippers downstairs.

“Nah, I’ll remember it,” I told myself. “It’s a great idea, I’ll totally remember it.” I rolled over and dozed off.

I woke up in the morning, empty. The idea was gone. Vanished. Vaporized. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t reproduce it.

I mentioned it to Todd the next morning, hoping that he would say “Oh yeah, you were saying something in your sleep. It was blah blah blah blah…” No dice.

Instead he said “You always think that the ideas you dream about are brilliant. I’ll bet it was really something like ‘Concrete Bananas’ though. Then when you get up in the morning and look at your notepad you’ll say ‘What? I thought that was brilliant?’”

Notepad has been restored in its rightful place by the bed. Hopefully it’ll come to me.