Sleeping, reading and writing

I'm suffering from insomnia right now, for the last few days I have been falling asleep around 3am, 5am, that kind of thing. It's no fun. It happens every now and then, seemingly unrelated to coffee intake or stress or anything I can put my finger on. Maybe I should enjoy the night hours and use the time for writing, but I'm not really awake enough, although not asleep enough either. Annoying. I hope it will pass, because it is causing me to miss my writing group meeting early tomorrow morning... I figured that there is little chance of my sleeping returning to normal tonight so that I can get up at 7.30 am (very unusual for me, if you know me well!) to make it to Tel Aviv by 10am. Shame. I was so looking forward to it. This is the small, intimate group of four of us, and the other three all had babies in the last 18 months so we haven't managed many get-togethers. And, with all their night-time feeding disruptions, it's me that ends up cancelling! Ironic, eh?

Anyhow, on a more positive note, I am continuing to be inspired by reading other people's stories and watching how they influence my own writing in terms of somehow giving me "permission" to do things in a different way. This happened with Roy Kesey's All Over (see my review here) which freed me from my need to explain and describe.

And now I am reading Paddy O'Reilly's wonderful collection, The End of the World, and I believe this has directly contributed to me finishing (can it ever really be finished??) a story I have been struggling with for over a year. Inspired by her final story, which is a set of very short pieces, I tried this with my story, giving sub-headings to the tiny sections, and suddenly it felt like it came together. And then I was able to write the end.

We will see. I need to let it lie now, let my writing groups take a crack at it. In a week, or a month, I may decide I hate it. But right now it's my new baby, it's beautiful and I love it. I'm blind to its faults, it can do no wrong. Thank goodness for the cool, critical eye of others!