Too many times have I laid in bed with fantastical excitement, running through plot lines and witty dialogue, making up exhilarating scenes and making myself giggle; only to not remember much of it when I wake up. It’s all too true the phrase: use it or lose it. Write it down or let it slip through your fingers like a smashed hourglass.

The biggest culprit is my unwillingness to get out of the comfort of my bed and write it down or disrupt my sleep by flicking my phone on to tap it into an Evernote. I can’t record anything because my partner is also trying to sleep.

So far, I have dealt with this by replaying it over and over in my head and writing it down in my Morning Pages, but of course, most of the substance is already gone. To prevent even having ‘night thoughts’ is something else I’ve employed and it seems to be working. I write. I literally write until my body is pouting and by the time I’ve laid down in bed and read a little of something (usually manga or memes), I’m too tired. I’ve managed to avoid losing idea by just letting myself throw them up on the pages throughout the day, rather than holding it in and finding it bottling up at the night where most of it is released and lost.

I have poor memory and so finding a solution to this was something I couldn’t avoid, and I was surprised to find the answer was just in avoiding that moment I used to relish in where I would just lay in bed and let my novels tell me what was happening. I write so much more freely and so much more often that most of it ends up in my journals or actually on the page now, not wasted to the nights where I selfishly kept it up in my head; where my mind would proceed to shred them as unimportant in my sleep.

And so, if you find yourself in the predicament of lavishly telling your stories in your head before bed and losing them by daylight, try writing more, even if it’s not “actual writing” and just planning or discussing with yourself where the stories are going. Smash out your quota of creativity during the day and grasp as much of it oozing out of you as possible.

Live, Laugh, Write.