Susan wants to know: what's reading done for you lately?

I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still

-- Slyvia Plath

Long before I wrote so much as my first chapter, let alone an entire book from start to finish, I created vignettes in my mind to help lull myself to sleep at night. Yeah, yeah, I hear you snickering. It wasn't the content, people--at least I hope not. It was the exercise. No, it wasn't even that. It was simply something I felt compelled to do.




Writing professionally didn't change that. It was still during that twilightish betwixt-and-between time when I wasn't quite asleep yet not truly awake either that I would suddenly solve the plot problem that had plagued me all day. It was like this miraculous gift... except for one not-so-little hitch. My brilliant solution was invariably gone in the morning.

Now clearly I'm a slow learner, because this happened to me quite a few times before I finally wised up and put a pad and pen in my nightstand drawer. That way when the answers I'd been wracking my brain for magically came to me in my semi-conscious state, I could scribble enough key words to remind me what I wanted to do once I was properly awake. It worked like a charm, too--until the morning I woke up, reached for my pad, and discovered that the pen had run out of ink and not one word of my elegant solution appeared on the tablet.

Noooooo!!!!

Luckily, there's an advantage to growing up having read everything I could get my hands on. I found a pencil and scrubbed the flat side of its lead back and forth until impressions made by my midnight scribbling began to form words. Whew. Thank you, Nancy Drew!

These days I work strictly with pencil.

How about you? Do you ever wake up with a fix to a problem you're sure is emblazoned in your brain, only to have it disappear when you're fully awake? Or, alternate question, has something you read ever saved your bacon in a tight situation?