Oops, I Forgot: The Most Important Energy Restorative

So before we begin, this post directly links to my previous post, and if you haven’t read that one, then this one will feel out of place. And while you can read all my post out of order, you’ll find that if you read them in the order they were published, you’ll be able to connect to points I’ve made earlier, and as a bonus, you get to see my growth as a writer.
Read the previous post here.

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I hope your weekend was restorative, and that you had some time to practice the little exercises for restoring your creative energy wells that I mentioned on Friday. I do have to apologize though, I sent out my Creative Energy blog about the different kinds of energy it takes to write, and how to refill each well. But I forgot the most important way to refill your creative energy buckets.

It’s simple, yet so many adults struggle with it. One in three adults sleeps less than the recommended seven to nine hours a night. And yes, sleep is the secret ingredient.

Now, I know I’ve talked about my college years and my thesis a lot these past two months, and I keep telling myself I’ll stop circling back. But it’s the closest experience I can draw from, and it shaped me as a writer. If you’ve been following me, you know the story. If you’re new here, you’ll find pieces of it scattered in past posts if you want to explore.

Back in college I was lucky if I slept six hours a night. I didn’t realize at the time how badly that was hurting me. Writing my thesis was torture. My ADHD didn’t help, but what really shook me was how barren my creativity felt. I couldn’t build arguments, I couldn’t think critically, and I couldn’t come up with fresh ideas. I thought maybe I was just broken as a writer, but in truth it was the lack of sleep.

It took four solid months of getting the full seven to nine hours before my creativity started to return. My mind cleared, my ideas came back, and I finally felt like myself again. And it makes sense. Sleep is when your brain gets to work in the background. During REM sleep, it links ideas together and pulls up memories in surprising ways. That’s why people often wake up with a new solution to a problem, or even dream an idea that turns into something brilliant. Many artists mention that they come up with creative concepts that came to them in dreams. Writers and scientists alike have leaned on sleep for those “aha” moments.

Sleep also resets your emotions. Without it, your brain becomes rigid and cautious, stuck in survival mode. With enough rest, the part of your brain that handles imagination and decision-making has the space to wander and take creative risks. That flexibility is exactly what storytelling demands.

And here’s the part most people don’t realize: sleep isn’t just another energy bucket, it’s the source that refills all the others. Mental energy clears after a good night’s rest. Emotional energy steadies. Even social energy is easier to manage when you’re not running on empty. Skip sleep, and everything else you do to refill your creative well works at half-strength.

I’ve always been a night owl. My creativity loves the night. I can function during the day; answer emails, do low-energy tasks, etc. But it’s after eleven at night that I really come alive as a writer. In college, though, I had to be in class by late morning. I couldn’t fall asleep before four, and I had to be up by nine. That meant my REM cycles were cut short again and again. No wonder my creativity deserted me.

Here’s the truth: it doesn’t matter if you’re a night owl or a morning lark. If you don’t get enough sleep, and one third of adults don’t, your creativity will check out. Not forever, but long enough to make you think your muse has abandoned you. It hasn’t. It’s just waiting for you to rest.

So for the sake of your characters, and for me (the bookaholic waiting for your book), please get some sleep. Your muse deserves it. And so do you.