I restrain myself from writing often about writing – I’m too junior at the task to contend with the great writers who have written great books about how to do it well.

But as it’s 2:33am I will share a tale of this evening’s authorial madness: I’ve been sick all week, haven’t slept well since I don’t know when, and somehow find myself writing this now about what happened a few moments ago.

As I lie in bed, praying for rest, I sense a stir in a distant, forgotten corner of my disturbed little mind. There I find a dim, cloud like thought floating towards nowhere, tempting me with the faint shadow, a gray line against infinite gray, of something hiding inside. And as the puffy, soft marshmallow of a thought hovers mindlessly in my Tylenol infused semi-conscious brain, I see, wrapped in its shadows, the faint golden spiral of a truth, a tight phrase, a magic sentence that connects everything in the chapter that has tortured me all week.

And then the horror begins.

Do I get up to write this down? Or pray to the muse that the idea is strong and will stay until morning? I’ve killed more brain cells in the tail chasing circles of this debate than modesty allows me to reveal. (If you write it down, will it still work in the morning? Can I get part of it down while in bed? Where is the damn pen? Will she forgive me if I wake her up yet again?)

So there I lie, stars crossing the sky, mice and men snug in their beds, hearing only the rhythm of in my wife’s breaths, a secret chant from the gods of sleep, reminding me of my longing for softness of unconsciousness… and no. I realize what’s rising behind the thought is a dark circle of wolves, fangs at the ready, chasing their literary prey. I want to deny the wolves, holding fast against the absurd undisciplined notion of hunting anything of the brain this late, on a night like this, knowing as they charge that all I have to do is turn over to the pillow, slow my mind and it will all fade away.

And this my friends, is what it is to write.