Morgan McCarthy, author of The Other Half of Me (just released by Free Press), was born in Berkshire, U.K., where she still lives. She has worked in a supermarket, a small independent bookstore and, most recently, as a media analyst. When not writing, she enjoys renovating houses, walking and fostering dogs for rescues and keeping up with new bands.
As all writers know, ideas can arrive at any time. When I was working on my first novel, I would often find myself repeating an idea in my head while exiting a restaurant, or on a phone call, or in the shower, so that I wouldn't lose it before I could get it down. None of these moments are convenient, but by far the least convenient moment for an idea is the richly associative time spent lying in bed, gradually falling asleep.
Wandering in a half-lit grey, through successions of caverns with oddly vaulted ceilings, junk piled in the corners: old rocking chairs, broken china. Noticing something moving, a small brightness; following it as it floats out of the dusk and back up into the light--and there you are, squinting and awake and clutching your idea, trying to find a pen and paper.
This process means it takes a long time to get to sleep. You dip in and out of the sweet water of unconsciousness before being propelled rudely back toward the surface. It also disturbs the person next to you when you switch on the bedside light to rummage around, then tear up tissue boxes so you can write on the back of them.
So, after years of delayed rest, I've trained myself not to think about a work in progress as I wait for sleep to arrive. But this raises the question: If I deliberately suppress an idea, will it be there the next day, waiting patiently for my consciousness to return to it, like a dog outside a grocery store? Or does it vanish altogether, because it is subject to its own peculiar set of variables: specific to that fertile time of near-dreaming? But I can't worry about that, or I'd never get any sleep.