Shoot. I knew it was my turn...

But I didn't get around to posting anyways. Oh well. Better late than never. Besides, if I had posted, we all wouldn't have gotten to enjoy Sonja's story. Which was totally worth me not writing anything witty.

Still, my wittiness is now to be called upon. But, well, you're probably out of luck.

While not witty, I have been feeling especially creative these days- I've come up with several new story ideas... and one re-"vamp" ing (as it were) of an older story. Yeah, that's right. Vampires. I know, that's HOTT.

What's interesting is that the other night I had a dream and while i was telling my brother - Brynswick Stew, that is, and JB, it was all kind of hazy, as dreams are. And then, JB, being the genius that he is, said it sounded like a good short story. So then the dream went from being randomly hazy to being a story idea. I've even started thinking of how to write it. Which is great... yet another writing idea that i can continue to not work on.

But what's really surprising is that the dream made vague enough sense that it could be worked into a story. Don't you ever have those dreams where you wake up in the middle of the night and think "Ah ha! The next great American novel!" and maybe, if you're really with it, write down the basics. However, the next morning comes along and in the harsh light of day, if you can read your handwriting, the idea is ridiculous and not even worth attempting to put words down on paper?

Yeah, that happens a lot to me. I'm not sure why your psyche things you're so much more brilliant during the night, but I've had a lot of failed story ideas go that way. So it's especially exciting that this one might actually make it. Maybe I'll take a page out of Sonja's book and make it a short story. I'm feeling inspired enough to write a few thousand words, maybe. Although, i probably won't. You know, I'm just saying.

Oh, and for the sake of my entertainment, everyone please email Sonja and ask her how she's doing on her quest to master the hula hoop. Because it would be funny. :)

Moms Are So 5

Sleep, glorious sleep. So you can probably tell just from my first sentence that I have not done well with that whole Getting Up Early thing. I have, however, managed to train my brain to wake up at 6, look at the clock to confirm the hour of buttcrackiness, and then go back to sleep. Yeah, I'm awesome. Don't hate me because I'm so 5.

Skye's story about her mom's wake-up tactics reminds me of my own teenage wake-up routines. My mom is a very gentle and understanding waker-upper. When she used to wake me up for school in the morning, she would gently crack the door open, whisper, "time to get up now," wait for a response (usually, "mmph") and then tiptoe back down the hall. If I failed to get up, she'd come back in five minutes and repeat the process.

My dad got wake-up duty now and then if my mom happened to be busy packing lunches or something. (Yes, my mom packed me a lunch every day of my life until I went to college. Don't hate me because I have the Best Mom Ever.) My dad was not so kind in his routine. It usually went something like stomping down the hall, busting through the door, flipping the lights rapidly on and off, all while making loud, slightly-off-key bugle noises. When you are 17 years old and have to get up at 5:30 in time to catch the bus at 6, bugle noises are not in the Top 10 Ways I Like To Wake Up. Really, I don't think there actually is a Top 10 Ways I Like To Wake Up when you're 17.

In any case, my dreams are totally not as cool as Skye's, so I don't guess I lose out on too many nuggets of wisdom when I wake myself up early. Now the trick is getting my body to get out of the bed. I'm thinking that part might be slightly more difficult.

To sleep, perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub

I realize I have yet again fallen behind in posting. And will probably continue to do some in the next few weeks, since I'm going walkabout on Sunday to go visit law schools. And friends. :)

At any rate, I have nothing to offer Sonja in the way of advice for getting up earlier... I love sleep. Not even cattle prods would convince me to wake up earlier if I didn't think i was ready to get up. My mom (and brynmuffin will corroborate this) used to be SO cheerful that she would sing obnoxiously cheery songs in the morning to wake us up. I once chucked a pillow at her and told her i was practicing for the weekend. This, however, did not work. Alas, as a result, now that I'm no longer forced to wake up for, say, work, I don't. Simple as that :) JB does occasionally drag me out of bed with him (the crazy man only needs a little bit of sleep! how weird is that?)

Anyways, to connect sleep and inspiration, I have 2 stories. One involves an old book and one involves a new one.

The first: While i was writing my first book as my senior thesis in college, I was having troubles coming up with a title for it. I strained my brain trying to think of something and couldn't come up with a title that suited it. So one night I went to sleep after a hard day's work of typing. Ah ha! Suddenly, I woke up in the middle of the night with the most insightful title i could never have thought up awake. I was so excited! It was perfect. The book would sell on the title alone. This was it. Of course, I thought that i should write it down, but couldn't find any paper near my bed and thought to myself "Well, it's so perfect, I'll never forget" Yep, bet you can guess the ending to this story... I woke up the next morning with the memory of having thought of the perfect title.... AND NO MEMORY OF THE TITLE ITSELF. Ugh. It took me several months to come up with another one that I'm quite sure isn't as good as the first: Misdirection. Of course, I'm left to wonder if i ever really came up with the perfect title or i just dreamed that I did. You know how when you dream and you think you've solved something perfectly and you wake up and are like "well, obviously my brain is on crack because that wouldn't work in a million years?" well, it's possible that's what happened. But i prefer to believe in my genius. And then my lameness in forgetting. :)

Oh, and I should add as a p.s. to that story that when I actually thought up Misdirection as a title, I was flying somewhere and had another ah ha moment. And then remembering my mistake of last time, asked the man sitting next to me if i could borrow his pen for a minute to write it down. :) Lesson learned.

The second story involves a dream from just the other night. It's all getting vaguer in my head as time passes, but it spawned an idea for a book that I still remember, so I'm counting that as progress. The dream involved a lot of lawyers, basically, and as the dream progressed in odd ways (which I'm not sharing because it'll take too long) I figured out that all of the lawyers for this law firm i was dreaming about were VAMPIRES. Yeah, basically, i can't figure out if I'm 1) reading too many vampire stories, 2) watching too many back episodes of Boston Legal or 3) am really nervous about becoming a lawyer and having everyone hate me. What do you all think?

My story idea, of course, is way cooler. :) But yes, it includes vampires and lawyers all the same. Lucky me!