There’s a particular kind of madness that strikes in the dead of night. When sleep eludes me, my mind, a restless tyrant, decides to throw a parade of fleeting thoughts. Sheer brilliance flashes in those moments but, by morning, rarely do I remember what any of it meant. My unconscious mind, in its infinite wisdom, occasionally gifts me with bullet points for the next great American novel or paradigm-shifting essay. But most often, I wake to find that those thoughts have evaporated, leaving behind nothing but the ghost of a melody or a line that feels like it might have been profound once.
I yearn for a special place in hell for those moments when I awake, pen in hand, ready to immortalize some divine revelation, only to discover I can’t recall a single coherent word. So, I lie there, staring at the ceiling, hoping the words will return like a loyal canine companion. They don’t, and they never do. They’re like that elusive friend who says they’ll text you back and then vanishes into the ether.
Lately, I’ve decided that enough is enough. I’ve surrounded myself with pen, paper, and enough electronic devices to make me feel like a character in a dystopian novel. I’ve even toyed with the idea of leaving voice notes for myself—though, in all honesty, the thought of listening to my groggy 3 AM ramblings is about as appealing as chewing on tinfoil. If Siri could reliably transcribe my nocturnal mutterings, that might be the way to go, but I can only imagine the horrors that would result from a misheard word or two. I’ll wake up and read “Cthulhu rises from the grave” perhaps. You get the idea.
Then there are those nights when I know, deep in my bones, that I had something genius to write — only to wake up blank. I stay up, waiting, coaxing, and bribing my brain with promises of tea and perhaps a nice breakfast if it would just cooperate. But no, the muse is a fickle creature, and she doesn’t respond well to threats nor bribes, apparently.
As artists, we’re often told to seize these fleeting thoughts, to treat them like rare, precious gems. But what they don’t tell you is how exhausting it is to keep mining those gems, especially when half of them turn out to be fool’s gold. I’ve come to realize writing, like any fine art, is a selfish pursuit masked as a noble one. It’s an endless quest to capture and communicate those ephemeral flashes of brilliance.
I’ve always dreamed of my words flying across oceans, touching hearts thousands of miles away. Perhaps they have, in their small way, even if the numbers didn’t quite live up to the grand fantasies I harbored as a child — one who thought the world was just waiting for my first novel or chart-topping song. Clearly, it wasn’t.
I haven’t given up on those novelist dreams yet, though. I have works floating in the cloud that are so close to being published it’s almost tragic. But it’s not about waiting for the perfect time; that’s a trap as old as time itself. If I waited for the stars to align, I’d be dead before I wrote the first chapter.
No, the problem isn’t fear anymore — fortunately, I’ve outgrown that neurosis. It’s something deeper, something tied to my DNA as a writer. My essays, for example, seem to be the only place where I can say what I truly need to say, with no embellishments or fantasies. My stories, on the other hand, are the playground for my overactive imagination—a place where I can spin tales that probably only I find amusing.
For as much as I write—and believe me, I write a lot—I never feel it’s enough. Some writers are content with a handful of well-received works; they hang their hat on that and call it a day. Not me. I’m the type who will revise a piece a hundred times and still find something to tweak. It’s why my novels remain unpublished—there’s always one more thing to fix, one more sentence to perfect. I’m the textbook definition of a perfectionist, and it’s a curse not a boon.
Why can’t I just let my work be? Why can’t I accept it as it is, focus on what it could be, and stop obsessing over what it was? I suspect this is a universal affliction among artists—a chronic dissatisfaction that drives us to create, to push boundaries, and never settle. We can’t bear the thought of mediocrity, of our work being anything less than extraordinary.
Yet, life itself is as fleeting and elusive as those midnight musings. We’re all just passing through, our time on this earth a brief flicker in the grand scheme of things. Maybe that’s why we’re never satisfied—deep down, we know that nothing we create will ever be perfect. But that’s no excuse to stop trying. All we can do is aim to be the best version of ourselves, follow our instincts, and keep creating—no matter what the result might be.
So, the next time I wake up at 3 AM with a line of poetry in my head, I’ll write it down, even if it’s gibberish by morning. Amidst the chaos and confusion, I keep telling myself there’s something worth saving—something that will one day resonate with someone else, in some distant corner of the world. If not, at least I tried.
~ Amelia Desertsong
