Insomnia Leads to Inspiration

This is a true story. So many of my ideas have come from many nights of not being able to sleep. Dreamwalker was written during many bouts of insomnia. Usually at 3:15 a.m. I just couldn’t sleep anymore and so I would pull up the notes app on my phone and write. Emma Jayne Potter was born on January 18th, 2019 and here I am on March 18th, 2023 still finishing her story. Dreamwalker is a pet project, it’s a novel that is near and dear to my heart. I often wonder if it’s a story that I’ll want to share once it finished. I’m just kidding of course.

This morning I took some time to add to the beginning of Dreamwalker because ripping out some parts is killing me inside and that is what this post is all about. As a writer who is also a reader I never really understood what the novel writing process really was until I had to go through it. It’s grueling, heartbreaking at times, and sometimes it’s so much fun when the words just shower out onto the page. Which is what was happening today.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. Another insomnia filled night and as I laid on the couch in the darkest of darkness’ (I forgot to plug the nightlight back in) a lightbulb came on. I realised why I had been struggling so much with Dreamwalker. I was removing parts of the story that I really didn’t want to remove and doing so because of feedback I had received. Now, I will state that the feedback wasn’t negative in any way shape or form… it was just an opinion and that is something I always value.

The Lightbulb

I’ve decided that I am going to leave in most of the detailed parts of Dreamwalker. It’s Emma’s life story and there are parts during her childhood that are necessary and I’m not willing to ‘kill the darlings’ or ‘the babies’ as the saying goes. This is why I self publish. I don’t want anyone to tell me what I can and cannot do with my novels and stories. If you’ve read cHaoS! then you know that my writing is unconventional. I do not do mainstream. I do not follow the rules that are set forth by major publishing companies, which is why I self-publish. I’m a publishers nightmare.

Author’s are told to stay inside of the lines. Write in a genre that is most popular right now, which are the following:

1. Young Adult
2. Romance
3. Fantasy
4. Horror

Dreamwalker falls into the YA genre, as the reader you will walk along with Emma from her childhood to her adulthood. You will go with her during some of the toughest of times and some of the best of times. You will get to intimately meet her friends and know who their parents are by name. That was one thing about growing up that I experienced. I knew my friend’s parents by first name and that’s how they preferred to be addressed. Apparently this isn’t the norm for most, but it was the norm for me.

My Book Baby

Dreamwalker is so precious to me. It’s the novel that got me back into writing and inspired me to publish three novels over the last two years. It’s pushed me to do the things that I love that I never had ‘time’ for. And that’s why this is taking me so long to write the middle and finish the dang story. It’s never smart to push a story when it’s not quite ready. I know that Dreamwalker may take a few more months, and that’s okay.