The Big Awake

    Insomnia is fun, isn’t it? Those of us who cannot shut off our brains get that extra four hours of a day. The house is quiet and dark and peaceful. It would be a perfect time to drift off to sleep, but the insomniac's brain is going full throttle, reliving perceived slights, a mortifying social faux pas, or pondering a Big Question.
    That question is, of course, “Can you give a dog Bean-o?"

Who, me? 

    Well, sometimes that's the question keeping me awake. Other times it’s questions about work (“What was that deadline?” or “Did I sign that before it got filed?”); family (“How is she ever going to get out from under that horrible mortgage?”); or just general worries over things one cannot control (“Ebola!”).
    Sometimes, the things that keep me awake are fun. Recently, it was a title. The title jumped into my mind and I immediately came up with an opening scene and then the next one and then… I got out of bed and wrote a couple thousand words. It’s unusual for me to come up with a title first, because I usually just slap a working title that consists of a character's name on a WIP until something happens to change my mind. I know from seasoned professionals not to get too attached to any title I put on a story because it’s likely to get changed.
    But I do hope that my middle-of-the-night title stays, because it still makes me laugh.In fact, as I wrote the opening scene, I found myself giggling a little. Even after I finally went back to bed, I was still happy and looking forward to discovering what trouble my characters were going to get into next. I don't mind sleepless nights like that, at all.