You know the drill. You’re sitting there, staring at the blinking cursor.
The coffee’s cold, your brain feels like a sad lump of potato salad left out at a barbecue, and the only thing you’re creating is a growing sense of dread.
Then it happens. Your body betrays you.
You blink. Maybe just a little too slow. And BAM. The Sandman sucker punches you, dragging you into the abyss of an unplanned nap.
When you wake up. Disoriented, drooling, and for a minute or two you think you’re either back in 1996 or the middle of an apocalypse…
You think, “Well, that was useless.”
But oh, my sweet, groggy friend, you couldn’t be more wrong…
Nap are the secret sauce to my creativity.
I always think of naps as some sort of mental car wash.
Power washing off all the grime of overthinking. You wake up with that weird, half dream haze, where ideas start connecting in ways they wouldn’t when you’re awake.
(Why does the villain in your story suddenly need a pet ostrich? Who cares. It’s genius. I’m gonna run with it)
There’s also this post nap weirdness.
That foggy, groggy state? Pure gold. It’s like your brain hasn’t quite reloaded all its filters yet, so your thoughts are raw, unpolished, uninhibited. You’re too disoriented to judge yourself, which means you’re primed to create something unexpected.
We don’t want perfection cause that is boring. Chaos is where all the good shit lives.
You know how your computer works better after you reboot it?
Same deal with your brain. That short nap hits the reset button on your mental processes, giving you a fresh perspective. Even if you wake up feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck driven by a drowsy clown.
So keep a notebook handy. When you wake up, write down whatever weird ass thoughts are floating around in your head. Don’t worry if they make sense. “Purple cactus apocalypse” might not mean anything now, but it could be the seed of your next big idea.
People on social media are trying to tell you not to lean into the weird.
I say do the opposite.
That post nap haze is where the good stuff lives. You’d be silly to fight it…
Embrace it. Write the things, draw the things, create the things.
Keep the naps short. Preferably 30-45 minutes. You don’t wanna be dancing with Sleep Purgatory. There is no creativity there. Only grumpiness…
I guess I could say this is some sort of self care routine too.
Self deprivation does the same thing too but that is not something I’d recommend. Unless you want think up some genuine nightmare fuel for your next horror story.
Well. It’s just after 9pm here now and that nap served me well.
Stephen Walker