My beloved mother had such a hard time with chapter two of my novel she didn’t finish; whereas, my dad liked one of my books so much he fell asleep reading it (see photo) and read it in two days. I didn’t know whether to be grateful for the extremely valuable feedback or my own mother not pushing through. How dare she? It took me forever to rewrite to 5,284 word (23 pages, double spaced). It was originally 17 pages, I think (or I’m exaggerating for comparison).
Either way, she is supposed to read the new version today (Sunday) and if I don’t get anything but this book should win the Pulitzer Prize based solely on chapter two, I won’t lie, I’ll be disappointed.
I have a tough time writing sometimes because I frequently fall asleep while writing, and it’s not necessarily because my stuff bores me to sleep; however, I have had the experience where my writing bores even me. I have idopathic hypersomnia.
Would you like to know what idopathic hypersomnia is? You may already know, I don’t know your personal life skills, hopefully they are well rounded. Well, idiopathic means “of unknown origin” and hypersomnia is the opposite of insomnia. So, basically I fall asleep wherever and am constantly exhausted and sleeping all the time. I consider a nap three to four hours, as opposed to the normal one hour.
The most fun of hypersomnia is falling asleep with a cup of tea in my hands because, oddly enough, the tea doesn’t stay inside the cup when that happens. I wake up swear a little (or a lot) then change my clothes.
Fortunately, I now have medicine that keeps me awake long enough that I can write and function. It’s nice to write without finding that you are on page 126 and a bunch of / are all over the screen. It did take me a while to figure out I could just close the document and reopen it because I save things after each sentence at least, rather than delete my sleep typing.
Too make the long story short (too late) I am on chapter four and, God help me, this book is going to take forever to write.
Miriam Kavanagh
Coffee & Writing 
Leave a comment