There are days when I easily slip into “the zone” of writing. There are other’s when my mind scampers about like a squirrel in springtime, never pausing long enough to fully formulate a thought or an idea.

While working out this morning, gazing through the windows of the fitness joint I belong to, rain sitting in reflective puddles that mirror a steel gray sky, I pondered this matter. What came to me was that writing is a lot like REM sleep. From Wikipedia:

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. REM sleep is classified into two categories: tonic and phasic.^[1] It was discovered by Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky in the early 1950s. Their seminal article was published September 4, 1953.^[2] Criteria for REM sleep include not only rapid eye movements, but also low muscle tone and a rapid, low voltage EEG — these features are easily discernible in a polysomnogram, the sleep study typically done for patients with suspected sleep disorders.

REM sleep in adult humans typically occupies 20-25% of total sleep, lasting about 90-120 minutes. During a normal night of sleep, humans usually experience about 4 or 5 periods of REM sleep; they are quite short at the beginning of the night and longer toward the end. Most people tend to wake for a short time at the end of a REM phase. The relative amount of REM sleep varies considerably with age. A newborn baby spends more than 80% of total sleep time in REM (see also Active Sleep). During REM, the sum activity of the brain’s neurons is quite similar to that during waking hours; for this reason, the phenomenon is often called paradoxical sleep. This means that there are no dominating brain waves during REM sleep.

REM sleep is physiologically different from the other phases of sleep, which are collectively referred to as non-REM sleep. Most of our vividly recalled dreams occur during REM sleep.

Many times when I’m writing, I lay on my belly on the floor with a couple pillows to keep from getting rug burns on my elbows. More often than not, I end up taking a nap first, as my brain gets that tickling feeling that comes right before I drop into sleep at night. When I awake twenty or thirty minutes later, I immediately pick up my pen and flow through several hours of deep writing.

When I realized that I wrote best when my brain was in that post-somnambulant state, I worked on training it to get to that level without falling asleep. So far it hasn’t quite worked, but I know it can be done. If David Blaine can hold his breath for more than 16 minutes underwater without assistance, I can train my mind to sink into that REM state with my motor functions still doing what they need to do.

However, I really like to sleep, so sometimes I indulge in that need to slip into nothingness every once in awhile.