Uh oh. I'm going to wish I'd never seen this tonight.
Last night I had insomnia. This is not all that unusual; as a ‘thinker’ I am unduly burdened by brain processing, and I’d been knocked out all last week by a cold and resulting cold medicine, and last night was the first time I went to bed without chemical help. Even so I did an afternoon workout hoping to be too tired for the ol’ sleeplessness to come back.
Didn’t work. At around 2 a.m. I woke up (unable to see clock without my glasses, and putting them on is admitting the insomnia is really bad, so the time remains a fuzzy red figment in the dark) and was plagued by the sense that the bad guy in my sequel is just not scary enough.
Creepy, yes. Disturbing. The potential for a great deal of gore is also there, which I’ve handled with buckets, tarps and scene cutaways (I tend to be of the suggestive rather than explicit school when it comes to violence) and he’s nicely crazed with a well developed pathology. Even so, he’s just not ‘popping’ for me… and if it’s not working for me it’s definitely not going to be working for readers.
So in my insomniac bed I thought of an old standby suspense technique—the ticking clock. I had it in there, but an early death of the victim killed it (ha! Pun!) and so today I did what I have to do to keep track of time—printed out a calendar of the month of the story, stretched out the timeline and extended hope to the hopeless.
I set one of these babies up for most of the book. It almost blew up my brain, I'm not usually this organized.
I gave the victim a clear expiration date that the reader knows and Detective Leilani Texeira doesn’t. In the original the guy was in a coma and peacefully slaughtered. Well, today he woke up and demanded to know what the hell was going on.
And suddenly, the story’s scary. Urgent. A date at the top of each chapter begins a new day and reminds you the dude in the cave is going to buy it if Lei doesn’t get off her toned ass and climb out of the pool with the hot developer to track down the madman.
I feel a heady power— I can manipulate time! I can bring back the dead, and invent entire bureaucracies! I can just freakin’ make stuff up, and when it doesn’t work, I can completely change it!
I love being a writer. Even the insomnia—when it amounts to something useful. Unfortunately sometimes I forget the brilliant ideas I have in that effortless gray between sleeping and awake.
Do you have insomnia? How do you handle it, and what usually brings it on?
I don’t have insomnia. I just don’t have time to sleep. Nice job with your book. I’d certainly read it.
(From the A to Z Challenge)
THanks so much for popping by! I enjoyed your blog as well!
I used to lie awake for hours, every night, unable to stop my mind from going over everything that had gone wrong, could go wrong, could be improved, …
For years I got by with about 4 or 5 hours of – interrupted – sleep, and it drove me crazy.
Until I noticed on holiday I fell asleep more easily in areas where it was pitch dark and completely quiet. Now I sleep with an eyemask and earplugs, and it’s much better. As if reducing the number of external triggers gives my brain less to linger on.
I hadn’t expected to find an easy solution, but it was as simple as that. 🙂
I live with chronic fatigue due to insomnia. Tried Ambien once and had a very bad experience. So I just wait and eventually sleep finds me. Like you, I find that it is a time when I am at my most creative. Something magical about it?
Love the idea that the reader knows something that your protagonist doesn’t. Hope for more sleepless night, but not too many.
Sometimes I wish I had insomnia, to give me a nice, clear-cut explanation for why I’m tired all day (doc is reevaluating my current diagnosis). That calendar thing sounds intriguing…we’ll have to talk about that more. And the benefits of being a writer?? ABSOLUTELY! That’s one reason I love my current paranormal. It’s not historical (which I also love), and it’s partly set in a made-up parallel world, so I can make stuff up. And though I rely on myths and legends for some of it, if those myths don’t work for my story, I change it. Thanks to sparkly vampires, there is a precedent for stepping off the well-worn path. 😀
I hope they figure out what’s wrong soon, m’dear!
Sad to say, I can relate to the red numbers being illegible without the glasses. Out ’em on and it’s all over. Just like this morning. But… the next book is starting to take shape in my mind.
Yay, nothing like the beginning of a new book, I love that excitement.
My meditation studies have helped me learn how to deal with the spinning thoughts and quiet my mind. With practice, I got to where I can now fall asleep within a matter of minutes.
Of course, I always tell the hubs that it’s because I ‘sleep the sleep of the innocent’. That usually has him rolling his eyes. LOL
Sounds like you handle it beautifully. I tend to snack and write in the middle of the night. Love your solution to your story problem. Sublime.
Nice to see your pretty face showing up at my blog again, and thanks for the idea (snacking) LOL!