The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award is down to 3 YA finalists.  Synapse is sadly  not one of them.  The contest is now up for public vote, though.  Check out the finalists and help choose the winner at  http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011

It was a fun ride while it lasted!

Here’s a trick I used to use a lot, back in the olden days.  Rather than jump right out of bed in the morning and plunge directly into the left-brain tasks of the day, I would lay there and let my right brain cogitate.  I’d nudge it toward a problem I was having with my writing and let it wander.

My very left-brained, morning person husband considers this sort of behavior borderline lazy, but some great story ideas came out of this technique.  Really!  I wouldn’t lie to you.

He’s right about one thing, though.  I’m not a morning person.  Leaping out of bed full of vim and vigor is a completely alien concept for me no matter how well or how long I’ve slept.  But according to Sleepy Brains Think More Freely in the journal Scientific American Mind, I was using that drowsy time to advantage.

The idea is that when your brain is sleepy it’s more open to stray, unfocused thoughts that can lead to those light bulb moments.  It’s not locked into reality as we are supposed to see it, but freed up to find alternative
solutions.

 I had it right, then!  I am more creative in that drowsy morning state.  On the other hand, morning people should create during that can’t-keep-your-eyes-open twilight period just before their brain blinks out at night.  

I try that nighttime routine, too, but I tend to fall asleep without properly documenting my ideas, and POOF they’re gone.  
 
Then there’s the creative nap.  Before I had a real job, those not-quite-asleep, meditative midday rests were sometimes ripe with story ideas.

So, why don’t I do my morning creativity exercises anymore?  It has to do with sleeping on a Murphy bed in the living room with a morning person who wants to get into work early every morning.  Ugh!  

After reading this article, though, I may need to make some changes.  For creativity’s sake, of course.  Not because I’m lazy.