Now, I think you’re all aware that you haven’t heard from me lately. The reason is that I’ve been crippled with a two ton weight of writer’s block. It wasn’t for lack of wanting or time–I was just idea barren. Every time I picked up a pen and delved into my subconscious I found “BLANK.” Utter blackness. Utter nothing. What was I, losing my imagination out the back of my head? I threw down the pen in disgust and decided to loll around like a couch potato for a while because why not? I couldn’t write, I had nothing to do with myself. Even more annoying, the one time I didn’t lack a smidge of imagination was at night, when I was comfortably in bed and wasn’t going to move for anything. I could hear the prose rolling around in my head, several story ideas popping up at once. But I could never remember them in the morning. It took me FOREVER to realize the stupidest thing: write when you need to write.
I know, it seems so stupidly simple, doesn’t it? Right now you’re scoffing at me, going, “IT ISN’T THAT EASY” before continuing to bash your head against the wall. The thing is…I didn’t have a choice. Once there’s an idea, you have to snatch it up or it can be gone before you blink. That’s why I carry a notepad in my purse–I take no chances. Pulling yourself out of bed at 12-1 in the morning, though, that requires some heroic effort. Trust me, once you actually sit up you feel like Hercules (also, tired).
One of the funnest things about this for me, though, was that I was utterly sleep deprived both times I did this. I had hit my over tired plateau ages ago, and I was floating in space with the walls whirling and all that jazz. I still put a pen to paper and WROTE. Why not? There was an idea, and my inner editor had shut down because there was no way SHE was going to stay up this late if I decided to be an idiot. My brain was fried; it wasn’t going to second guess anything I wrote. There was nothing but me and the pen and the page.
Yes, the story is weird. Yes, it doesn’t make sense in some places. But you know what? It’s a story. It is a story I wrote when I thought I was mired in the pits of writer’s block. It was even fun to read the next morning, when I couldn’t remember what I’d written. It was an experiment that succeeded. Maybe your time to write isn’t 1 in the morning, but all the same: write when you need to write, no matter how tired or otherwise supposedly impaired. You will have a lot of fun with it, at least. And you may even be pleasantly surprised in the morning.
My Life is a Notebook 
My poor mother when I start tossing things around in the car in search of a pen…and my poor father when I almost run into him while dashing across the house to GET THAT NOTEBOOK.