Time Enough at Last

Alas, now that I have the time to work on my writing, I'm not sleeping. It hasn't affected my production, and I'm very happy with where my manuscript is, but I feel burned out for a lack of sleep.

I can't put my finger on why it happens, but I tend to go through cycles of insomnia. I'll be fine for four or five months straight, then I'll have a week or ten days where I can only get a few hours of shut-eye a night if I'm lucky.

I've been up until all hours of the morning over the last three days, reading and playing stories over and over in my mind. I keep paper and pen near my bed and I've had some neat ideas, which is always good. And I've risen a few times and gone to the word processor to flesh out a couple of passages.

But all in all, these stretches of fatigue zap me hard. I feel like a shell of myself a bit right now, and all the capillaries in my eyes are showing. Oh, well. I'm going to take a long run today and watch those Florida Gators tonight and here's to hoping that the sleep gods shine on me and I snatch ten hours of rest between now and tomorrow.

And the truly asinine part of this lack of rest is the vast amount of time I have in which to collect it. I don't have any responsibilities at the college for months!

Sheesh. I feel like poor Henry Bemis, that "charter member in the fraternity of dreamers" who only wants to read and, when the chance finally presents itself, finds it blocked by cruel fate.

Enough belly-aching. I finished the edits for my story "9 Curzon Place" yesterday. This tale is fairly strong, I think (hope), and will appear in the February issue of Something Wicked. I also received a very kind and helpful rejection (with an offer to re-submit) on a story I finished over the Christmas break. I'll visit that one first today, then hit the novel with an important plot sequence that needs some fine-tuning.

Any tips on dealing with insomnia I'll accept with gratitude in the comments section below...