Thursday, August 18, 2011

If I could type while I sleep...

Last night, I had a great idea for a blog post. I had about 500 words written out in my head. It was about poetry, I think. Don't worry, I wasn't writing poetry.  I learned my lesson on that score years ago, though not early enough to save myself from lots of retrospective embarrassment. I took myself WAY too seriously and thought I had lots of profound things to say. Hopefully I've learned that lesson somewhat and look back on these someday knowing that even though it's obvious that I don't know much, I KNOW I don't know much. Except about U2. I know a lot about U2, but I'm not like an expert or anything. Just... full of trivia.

So there I was, comfortably snuggled up with all the pillows, waiting for my husband to come to bed. He said he was tired and going to come to bed early, so I was very excited. Usually "early" for him is about an hour after "normal" for me, so the chance to fall asleep together is sort of exciting. So, to keep myself awake while I waited for my darling spouse to finish whatever it was he was doing on one of his many connected-to-the-Internet devices, I started thinking out a blog post. I might have done better if I'd remembered that this sort of thing only ever ends in tears, because I never remember all the brilliant things I was going to say the next day. I don't know why I think I'm at my most creative and communicative in the 15 minutes before I fall asleep, but I'm convinced my best stuff is thought up in those moments.

I've considered getting some sort of recording device, and what would be great, would be if it could do that nifty speech-to-text thing, and then I could wake up and have a whole post already typed out and ready for publication. Only, everyone knows that I'm not necessarily my most coherent when speaking, and that diminishes significantly when sleepy. Added on to that the fact that speech-to-text technology is pretty cool, but for me only works if I try to channel Alan Rickman when speaking. That's not necessarily conducive to my creative flow...

an example, 100% from the speech-to-voice whatsit on my phone:

What I said- When I wanted to write a post about poetry when I was falling asleep, it was really frustrating because I think there's some really good stuff in there actually, about my poetry class and I wanted to write about my professor who's a little bit crazy and a lot a hippy and wanted to publish my book report, which was so embarrassing.

What it translated- when I wanted to write a post about poetry sleep because I think it's really good stuff in there ashley about to go to class and I wanted to write my professor who's the crazy I want to publish my book report soldier (photographic evidence as soon as I can get back to my computer with the cord that takes the pictures off of my phone...)

Pretty close, truth be told, but far enough off, with enough omissions, that if I was even the slightest bit sleep-incoherent, then filling in the blanks (And who is Ashley?) would be... problematic. In other news, a book report soldier would be fantastic!

1 comment:

Beylit said...

I used to keep a notepad and pen by the bed for jotting down of sudden brilliant ideas and strange dreams. I actually write very coherently when I am falling asleep, and when I am actually asleep. I once wrote like ten pages while I am fairly certain I was mostly asleep. My eyes were closed, I was laying down, and the notepad was at the far extent of the reach of my arm. I was so amazed the next day that I could read like 95% of what I had written, and was smart enough to figure out the 5% that was completely garbled. Sadly it turned out later that the stuff I wrote was complete garbage in context with the greater story it was supposed to fit into (actually it fit just fine and was sort of brilliant, but the entire section of the story was doing awful things to the main character and making her not likeable at all, so it all had to be scrapped for something less depressing that made the heroine spunky and likeable again).

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