by Rena Sherwood

Created on: June 20, 2008   Last Updated: August 23, 2009

Insomnia might give a writer an initial burst of activity, but ultimately it winds up hindering the writing process. Some writers use insomnia to lessen the rational voice in their heads and open up the floodgates of dreamy creativity. Unfortunately, inspiration is not all there is to the craft of writing. In order to be able to do all of those other aspects, you need to get regular sleep.

Editing

After your initial burst of inspiration to pound through a first draft, you need to go back and edit this new diamond in the rough. Every new piece of writing seems brilliant in the hot haze of inspiration, but when looked at with more sober eyes, you can see the glaring flaws that would keep a story from being understood, let alone from being sold.

Editing needs a lot of concentration, memory recall, tedious fact-finding and patience. You can't have these qualities when you are an insomniac. You might diligently think that you do have those qualities, but you are so tired that you can't see the mistakes that you are making.

For example, when you are sleep deprived, your thoughts often come to strange conclusions. You can wind up literally and metaphorically seeing things that aren't there. In your head, your leaps from one thought to another seems logical. However, on paper, these leaps of logic tend to seem like nonsense. They can also serve to screw up an otherwise good story.

Insomnia can also make you so irritable that you don't want to do any editing in the first place. This will definitely guarantee that your work will be rejected.

My Story

I was an insomniac and an unpublished writer for many years before I finally faced the fact that I needed to fix my bad health. I had become so sick that I didn't have the strength to eat, let alone to write, to send material to publishers or to do much of anything else.

It turned out that my insomnia was due to clinical depression. Once anti-depressants and a lot of lifestyle changes had kicked in, I could sleep regularly. Now I average about seven hours a night.

And what a difference it made! I now run my own freelance writing business, where I work on four blogs and numerous other web sites as well as have time to do work on short stories, poetry and personal essays.

When I was an insomniac, I would often get ideas that seemed absolutely brilliant and precious and I had to try and write them down immediately. These stories were absolutely worthless. I would have characters with outrageous names, plots lifted from old "Doctor Who" episodes and most of them were frequented by talking, flying horses for no real reason whatsoever. Although those stories were fun for me to read, they weren't fun for anyone else.

Now I can make a decent living doing what I love: writing. I'm a better editor and am open to suggestion from clients as to how to improve my writing to their specifications. Having to please readers other than yourself is a massive education for a writer.

But I couldn't have done it without working on getting better health, which includes getting regular sleep.

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