Fellow NJRW member Jenna Blue joins us for a guest post this week. Don’t forget to comment! One lucky commenter in the month of January will win a box of handmade salted caramels. Please help us welcome Jenna.

How Does Writing Ruin Good Sleep? Let Me Count the Ways…

Hi All, Jenna Blue here, guest blogger. If you’ve been following the Violet Femmes, you know they are a talented, driven, generous, and classy quartet of writers. I’m honored to have been asked to contribute to their site.

Today, I’m covering the many ways that writing negatively impacts your sleep. Plus, my hints to catch better Zzzz’s despite your creative tendencies. First however, I’ll share a short anecdote about a night in my own writer’s life that illustrates a number of these nasty sleep disturbances.

A couple of months ago, I woke from a particularly scary action dream. Think Suzanne Brockman’s Navy Seals with a twist: I was one of the bad guys. My fellow baddies and I had holed up in a dark, shabby house. Without warning, a Seal reached in through the wide-open windows and garroted my cohort. As soon as he vanished, I had a clear view of another, standing not fifteen feet away. He held my eyes. He didn’t look bad—he looked good. Sexy and experienced. Rough and rugged, in full camouflage with pockets bulging from ammo. So representative of an American soldier—one you could trust, one who had a family. And yet, I knew he was coming for me.

I scrambled backwards on all fours then ran to the kitchen. I skittered back and forth yanking open cupboard doors, looking for a heavy pan in the pitch black. Time was up. I could feel him getting close. I grabbed a knife, short-handled but solid, the kind I carve up fruit for my kids with every single day. It felt heavy and comfortable as I turned it in my grip, ready to use overhand. Hoisting myself onto the counter, I tucked myself into a corner by the door. I shook in my boots, but was ready to attack from above.

Not so, in real life. I woke abruptly, knowing that my dream mirrored reality. I had heard something in the house. No—two somethings.

As I lay anxiously sorting out dream from wake, my body remained tense and my mind careened from one possibility to the next. Our son’s captain’s bed has an awful, groaning creak. Sometimes, the shaving mirror in the shower crashes to the floor. No—these noises had come from downstairs. That left the possibility that my daughter was sleep walking, or intruders had entered my home. My husband snored beside me, loud, making it a struggle to listen to the quiet.

Adding to my anxiety, I’ve been taking a Weapons for Writers class online (I highly recommend it if you get the chance!). One of the first assignments was to go through all our personal spaces and figure out what could be used as a weapon. So I’m wondering if the extra blanket I needed at bedtime can be thrown over an assailant’s head. It would only slow him for a moment, probably, unless my husband, far stronger than I, wrapped him in a bear hug, pinning him blind in the material. I’ve got a pen, of course, a writer always does, especially bedside, which could do real damage if wielded overhand like the knife in my dream. If my husband managed to pass me the phone, I could slide under the bed—I refuse to consider that I might not fit. There, I’d be out of the arc of a baseball bat and two grappling men, could call 911 and even set the phone to speaker so that the dispatcher could replay the tape later, if we were done in. I’d find one of the supports that are always falling out. It’s heavy wood, and with luck a screw would still be sticking out of one end. Then, I’d slip out silently from the foot of the bed and attack!

I’ve heard nothing truly threatening in all the minutes I’ve laid here listening. Still, it’s clear by now that I won’t rest until I’ve separated myself from the rumble and roar only two feet from my numbed eardrums and checked on things.

The kids are safe and sleeping. I retuck. I have calmed, but am not convinced. I consider going downstairs to the computer—I’m excited to submit some work on my romantic suspense to a couple of agents I’ve just pitched to, but have loads of revisions to input. Yet I don’t want to be down there alone. Aren’t you always yelling at the heroine, “No, don’t go down there, you idiot! You’re asking for it!”? I am. Plus, I’m smarter than that.

So instead, in the hallway at the top of the stairs I sink none too gracefully into what my kids now call—wait for it, it’s so very PC—a criss-cross applesauce position. I try very, very hard to erect a mental block against all the creepy villains I’ve read over the years as they trot through my mind as if they are on parade. Soon enough, the cold is seeping up through my butt, and my hips hate this position. Surely, I finally decide, there is no one downstairs.

I climb back in bed, but before I can drift off, my husband wakes. I get up with him. I’ll never sleep. Not with Navy Seals visiting my dreams, a mental tallying of weapons in my bedroom, and all manner of scary scenarios playing out in my overactive imagination. Five a.m. and I happily head downstairs. I hate reading dream sequences, but this one’s mine, and I feel a powerful urge to get it on paper.

So, there you have it: in one night, you’ve got half my reasons for losing sleep:

1. Dreams that play out every bit as suspenseful as novels or movies.
2. Research begging to be done.
3. An overactive imagination.
4. Too many creepy villains and scary plots read to date.
5. The urge to put thoughts on paper, no matter the hour.

Here’s the others, many of which plague me regularly:

6. Staying up late to read. Hello, this one’s a given.
7. Browsing online for new releases or a favorite author’s backlist.
8. Characters—mine or other authors’—that carry on in my head even once I’ve closed the book.
9. Critiquing my pals’ manuscripts. I get just as into it as my own stories. Like reading a book, the laptop stays open way past my bedtime.
10. Actively writing. Not matter how exhausted I am, if I’m into a scene, I don’t notice the clock ticking away my Zzzz’s.

So, readers, who are the characters visiting your dreams at night? Which authors cost you serious Zzzzz’s? Please post. The Femmes and I would love to hear from you.

And, finally, what are your tips for better sleep? Personally, I can’t cure the writing bug, I relish the pull of a good book, and I would never want to silence a muse who visits in the night. I do, however, swear by the following:

1. Stick to a bedtime routine. Wind down the same way every night, and turn the lights out at a designated hour.
2. Don’t use the living room as a bedroom or the TV as a nightlight. Conversely, don’t pay bills or work in your bedroom.
3. Honor your body clock. If you need eight hours sleep, start the routine early enough to get it.
4. Exercise. At least sometimes.
5. Eat a good dinner—but not too much, not too early, not too late, not too rich. Save the chocolate for the afternoon slump. It’s known to cause nightmares.
6. Don’t read a good book. “Ack!!! What!?!” Seriously, if you are desperate for a good night’s sleep, don’t pick up the awesome book. Grab something boring—anything that doesn’t include loveable characters, hot kisses, sexy heroes, heart-tripping suspense, or fabulous chapter-ending hooks lurking inside to keep you awake.

And last but certainly not least:

7. Do something every day towards your writing goals. (This might not be making a certain page count. Instead, you might do a little research, brainstorm with a writing friend, or read a chapter in a grammar book.) If you do, you’ll sleep peacefully, knowing that little by little, you are making your dreams come true.

Long ago in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Jenna Blue hid one of her mom’s novels, a Kathleen Woodiwiss, in her nightstand drawer to be savored after lights out. Certainly she was too young to be reading anything that enthralling, but the die was cast.

After a few ill-timed starts and many years of membership in Romance Writers of America and New Jersey Romance Writers, Jenna is finally making the dream a priority. Somehow, someway, somewhere between the demands of a busy career and a thriving family, she’s writing romantic suspense and enjoying every minute.