Wednesday, April 22, 2015

S is for Sleep

One of my hobbies: sleep. For when I sleep, I dream and on the off chance I remember some of them the next morning, I get ideas for things like a new novel or a scene in one I already have started. Make sure, when not sleeping, to check out some other blogs and comment on their S topics over at A to Z Challenge.


Fiction

As a writer, sleep can both inspire and hinder progress. I am one who can remember a fair number of my dreams over time, with the occasional morning where I remember more than one even. A number of my novels had scenes and more inspired by dreams, including the one I'm editing. After I wake up, if I can remember the dream and it catches my interest enough, then I spend part of the day thinking about it and developing the story idea. On the other hand, if I'd not needed to sleep so much then maybe I would get more writing (like I could have finished a novel chapter last night) and be further along in my edits.

Characters sleep too. And one thing the writer has to do is decide if and when to mention it because except for the occasional dream (which  can be overdone in stories) often times, when the character is sleeping not much is going on to hold the readers attention.  We like to know that they do need rest like us and such but at the same time, don't need to see it a lot. One of my romance novel edits, I needed to cut back on how many chapters ended with them going to sleep cause that is too many obvious times to put the book down  and we don't want that.

Fitness

Sleep is good for fitness. There is a reason many programs emphasize taking a rest day. While I am doing 3 days of cardio and 3 days of lifting, I also have 1 day dedicated to rest where all I do is go to work and such. I don't do anything extra fitness wise on that day and I do cardio in between lifting days so that muscle groups get time to rest since that is when the body repairs itself. I'd not walk and such but that would be hard since I work on my feet all shift anyways, so legs are used to far less rest overall. Every now and then, it's good to take more than one day off, to give the body a break, when you're doing a lot of lifting and cardio. A rest set of days or week does the body good too and it may come whether planned or not.

Sleep is also known to help when working on getting healthier. Many studies have been done to show how much we do really need sleep. Even the ones who joke about how the will "sleep when I'm dead" and such, they do need sleep.

So make sure to rest on your journey as well. It all is part of how we get there.


How well did you sleep/rest last night/today? Did you have any good dreams?

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