I can make myself sit down and come up with a story or image. I have been trained to do it and can, but those ideas usually feel forced and the projects fizzle out. The best ideas...the ones that live and breath on their own...seem to just come to me, and usually at inopportune times.
I have learned to always have a notebook and pen with me when out and about, especially when on any sort of road trek or a musical performance of any kind. It could be one line, a character name, or a picture in my head. Last night presented me with the most common way my ideas make their visitations...just as I'm trying to fall asleep. My body was weary and I knew that my alarm would be going off in a mere 7 hours. But as soon as I closed my eyes, an image popped into my mind. A scrawny girl with a pageboy haircut and a girly dress lugging a cat carrier hauling something very mysterious. I got up and got a drink. An opening line popped into my head, and I could see a first page. Oh crap. I headed to the shelf and grabbed the clipboard and frantically scribbled and jotted.
Phew...creativity reigned and contained on paper. I'd work on hatching the idea in the morning.
Yeah right. As I lay awake for several more hours, more and more images and lines danced in my head. I'd do the math and realize, "if I go to sleep now, I can still get 4 1/2 hours", but then a facial expression of the pageboy haircut girl would draw itself out clearly behind my eyes.
Eventually I did drift off, but every bird chirp or snore that roused me, that girl would jump up and down and whistle "woohoo over here!". She just wouldn't leave me alone.
When the alarm did go off, I should have been to sleepy to move, but instead I dashed off to the shower and throughout my shampoo, I tried to think of a good name for the girl. I finally decided she doesn't need one...at least for now. I tip-toed downstairs so as not to wake kids yet, and curled up on the couch with a drawing board in hand. All the lines from my insomnia fest came tumbling out. I felt such a wave of relief to have freed them!
Half the time, an insomnia creativty burst that seems brilliant at 3am turns out to smell worse than boiled cabbage in the daylight. Maybe more than half the time. And then I'm grumpy --wasted time, lousy idea, and I'm cranky when I don't get enough sleep. But today, I find myself eager to get my obligations out of the way so I can get back to sketching and hashing things out.
You just can't pass up the opportunity when you feel energized.
I'll end with my new favorite quote --gathered from an interview with Tomie DePaola. "The creative process is a monster, and you have to feed it or it will eat you." And how.
