I came up with the all-American, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of our generation. It hit me like a slap across the face, one night when I was laying in bed. It was beautiful, it really was. Every sentence flowed into the next like running water in a brook. The imagery was so beautiful; it would have made F. Scott Fitzgerald cry. It was the kind of idea that makes you spring out of bed at two in the morning, pour yourself a drink and hammer away at the typewriter till the sun comes up. There was only one problem; I didn’t get out of bed. I was warm and comfy and my husband’s arm was slung across me like a fallen tree. Seriously, have you ever tried to remove a sleeping man’s arm from off your person? It is nearly impossible. So I just laid there and told myself the same lie I always do, “I will remember the whole thing in the morning.”

When I woke up the next morning and tried to describe the idea to my husband, it went a little something like this, “it was about a brother and a sister and she was sad, but not because it was raining, it just was raining, and the brother went down to the bakery and the baker’s daughter was there and she was smoking and I think she had a crush on him but I am not really sure.” Don’t even lie and try to pretend you have not had the same thing happen to you when you try to remember your brilliant ideas from the night before. So what do we do?

We use pencil and paper. No, no, it’s not an iPhone app. I mean real pencil and paper. That’s what Stephanie Myers did when she had a dream about a teenage girl who fell in love with a vampire, and I would say that worked out for her pretty well, don’t you think? You can go to almost any stationary or office supply store and find those cute little palm size notebooks that even have a handy little pen attached. You need to buy a few of these: one for the car, one for the nightstand and one for your purse (or your girlfriend’s purse). That way, wherever you think of great ideas, you have an easily accessible place to write it down.

Next, you just need the motivation to actually do it. Elbow your sleeping husband if you have to, run to the bathroom during the movie or ask your friend to stop talking for a second. I promise you it will be well worth it in the end.  No one ever got mad at themselves for writing something down that they later didn’t use. But not a day goes by that I don’t wish I had written down my Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the brother and sister and sad rain and a daughter, or whatever it was.