Napping: My People
Idly reading a New York piece in which Mary Gordon and A.M. Homes interview each other about the experience of writing “mother books,” I found two fantastic quotations from Homes that made me sit up and say aloud, “My people!”
Can we talk about the role of napping?It’s under-described and so essential.There’s something about the creative process that requires it.
Oh my God and how.I can’t tell you the number of times that my customary 3 PM-ish siesta has broken a writer’s block, and how much I miss it now.I’m just kind of useless at that time of day; it’s like my brain needs to defrag the hard drive or something, so it does that, but if I’m running other processes, everything gets way slowed down. I work a lot better on a split shift and it’s so nice to have that tendency validated.(And by Toni Morrison, in Gordon’s response: “You’re working when you’re napping.”Thank you, Nobel.)
More from Homes suggesting that we may have been separated at birth:
I also have this thing, which is so not smart: I don’t let myself read during the day.I should be working.But then I Google everything, like a pair of shoes that my character might be wearing.Two hours later, I’ve spent $150 at Land’s End.
We should get an office together, Homes and I. I don’t think I’ve read anything she’s written, but I’m-a start, because she is clearly My People.
Tags: books publishing writing
Yay! More validation for Naps. Napping is entirely underrated, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open around 4pm. I wish the Olympics had Napping Competitions because I would *so* win the gold medal.
The world really is divided into nappers and non-nappers. Non-nappers don’t feel better after a nap. Personally, I feel all heartburny and disoriented after a nap. My husband, on the other hand, is a tremendously prodigious napper, and I envy his peaceful Sunday afternoon siestas and 10-minute catnaps on the train.
Any tips for napping? I never ever nap because I find that once I go to sleep, I just want to sleep and sleep, I’m always afraid that if I take a nap at 3pm I’ll sleep until 11pm and then be up all night long. Do you set an alarm? Is it easy to rouse yourself from a nap or do you have that bleary-noooo I wanna keep sleeping! feeling that you have to fight off?
How did people describe the creative process (or thinking in general) before computers? “If I don’t take an afternoon nap, it feels like my carriage is jammed and I need to replace the ribbon”? I think I refer to my mental “screensaver” at least three times as often as I think about or mention my actual computer screensaver.
I’ll chime in for napping as well. Some afternoons I find myself struggling to keep my eyes open around 3 PM. If I just let myself have a ten minute catnap, I’m good to go for the rest of the afternoon. And luckily, I work from home so this is not a problem. :)
Oh, and the tendency to get sidetracked (for hours) online? Yeah, I totally do that too.
It’s funny to think how resistant I was to naps when I was five and they were cumpulsory, and how strong my affinity for them has grown now that they’re so hard to come by …
Monica, I’m just going to do a piece on napping instead of responding here, because I could go on and on. And will.
And do.
Ah, naps. I miss them.
In response to Monica – I found that I napped best in a 60-90 min time frame. Usually I woke on my own, but I always set an alarm. If I slept longer than that, the nap would turn evil and I would wake up angry and disoriented (guess my body thought we were down for the full count).
Back when I lived in a city with decent public transit, I could alert-nap on trains. I’m not sure how to describe it for people who’ve never done it – you’re semi asleep, but you know who’s around you and you never miss your stop. :)
I’m finding, especially now that I neeeeeeeed naps, not for the creative stuff but because (and this might be an overshare, and for that I’m sorry) I’m pregnant, and this little peppercorn inside me zonks me out. It’s especially difficult though because I haven’t found a good napping place at work. My car is out because one of the windows doesn’t work, and therefore I get no air in the car and it gets all stuffy and gross. We have a napping room at work, but I’m kind of afeareded to use it, what with HR mentally keeping tabs on it and all. There’s almost this stigma placed on napping at my work that if you aren’t tremendously sick, you shouldn’t be allowed to nap, and that? Is a stigma that needs to end.
I’m another non-napper, and I’m so jealous of those who can do it. First of all, it takes me 45 minutes to fall asleep. And if I DO sleep, once I wake up I’m so out of it I can barely function; it throws off my whole day. My husband can just lie down and be asleep, it’s amazing. And my dad’s whole side of the family is also full of skilled cat-nappers. Why not me?
For most of us non-nappers, we just don’t transition as efficiently between sleep stages. It takes us longer to fall asleep and wake up in general, and waking up once in a day is quite enough, thankyouverymuch. I only nap when I absolutely cannot keep my eyes open (usually because I’m sick). Nappers are better at transitioning between stages. At least, that’s what I’ve always been told, and for me, it makes absolutely perfect sense.
The only person I envy more than the napper is the command sleeper. “I’m bored, I’m just gonna go to bed, I guesszzz…..” or “Well, I did sleep til noon, but I have to be up by 5am so I’m just gonna go to bedzzzzzzz….” How I envy those people.
*hypnotherapist hat on*
“Alert napping” is actually a form of self-hypnosis. Hypnosis occurs when the brain waves move from beta through alpha to low alpha/high theta. (Delta is the next step down… that’s regular sleep.) So when you’re “alert napping” you’re in a hypnotic state. This is why you’re resting, but aware of everything around you. You’re so relaxed and your brain state is altered so it “feels” like you’re in a sleep state, but you’re not really. Useful state to be able to attain, too… 20 minutes in that space is like two hours of deep sleep.
For those who get the “evil nap” syndrome, I highly recommend meditation or hypnosis instead. Ditto for pregnant women… you NEED the rest, HR or not. Get some birth hypnosis CDs, go to the napping room on your lunch, and tell ’em you’re doing childbirth prep. It saved me when I was pregnant, I can tell you!
I nap AND do hypnosis, which is why my blood pressure is so low that doctors retake it every time I go. :)
Monica, one trick is to set yourself to doze rather than fully sleeping. Lie down on the couch, on the floor with a pillow, or in a good chair – not on your bed, where your body is programmed to deeper rest. (Napping on the bed can be contraindicated for people with insomnia, and may actually be outright verboten.)
It can help to turn on the radio or TV to a low audible volume. The sound keeps your consciousness tethered to real time, but allows you to zone out pretty effectively. On occasion, when I do want to genuinely sleep but not overdo it, I have actually set the kitchen timer or asked my mom to call me at some reasonable interval. (Another option is to nap shortly before it’s time to walk the dog … she won’t let me oversleep!)
Personally, I find it easier to nap in winter than summer, as by the time I get home from work it is already dark, so I won’t fall asleep in daylight and wake up in the dark. Coming to in those circumstances is too Rip Van Winkle – and I seem to need naps more during winter anyway.
I’m going to chime in for Homes, as well as for napping. She’s a terrific writer. Although I haven’t read all her stuff, everything she touches turns into NOT “chick lit”–she’s sardonic and crisp and lovely and twisted and hilarious. Often very dark. Music for Torching is a great take-down of suburban life; The Safety of Objects is a great place to start for short stories (one of which features the couple who later became the main characters in Music for Torching). I just finished This Book Will Save Your Life, which is a fast and funny novel about LA, while I was in LA, and in that respect it really did save my life.
I google a pair of shoes and two hours later have spent $150 at Land’s End? Hell yeah!
Errr… Back to work!
Go pick up The End of Alice, posthaste. The subject isn’t for the squeamish, but it’s so, so beautifully written.
And huzzah for naps. I can’t live without ’em either.
Sounds like I need to start reading Holmes, too… advocate for napping *and* stream-of-consciousness research/shopping? Definitely of the same tribe.
Google and Wikipedia are two of the fiction writer’s best friends and worst enemies. My problem is that I go to Wikipedia to look up, say, a particular method of building demolition, and then I come out of my wikitrance two hours later with my browser open to a page about the principal exports of Finland.
…at least my horrible ‘research’ habits are cheaper?
My people indeed!
My husband is that Easy Napper as well. He can lay down and be out cold in about 2 seconds. Same deal at night. I wish I could do that. I myself have to do the 20-minute Power Nap or none at all, becuase then I get all groggy and cranky. I can also Alert Nap, which does a body good. The exeption was when I was pregnant, boooy did I nap then. My advice to Munchkin is ignore the sideways glances you may get as you’re headed into the nap room (I mean, it’s there, right? Presumably for people to use!). You are growing another little person inside you for crying out loud, and anyone who gives you crap about needing to rest should cram it in their word-hole. :)
M. — “wikitrance” — I love it! And, sadly, know it too too well.
Hooray for napping or, as I like to call it, thinking with my eyes closed, and a somewhat more muted hooray for “research” — retail or otherwise. Food blogs make up my current “research” interest, and, since I’m trying to finish up a writing project, I am now know EVERYTHING about the food world. My actual topic? Not so much.
I look forward to your napping piece, Sars!
Oh, napping. I have totally sneaked (snuck?) five- and ten-minute catnaps under my desk, because some afternoons, when the sun comes in my office windows really strongly, I wind up faceplanting on my keyboard or drooling all over myself. I work in a teeny office, and it’s the only place to hide. It works pretty well because it’s dark but you can’t get too comfortable, and it totally solves the faceplant problem. On the other hand, it’s totally embarrassing, because hi: I’m a grown-up professional person who sleeps under her desk. And sometimes drools.
“Alert napping” is actually a form of self-hypnosis. Hypnosis occurs when the brain waves move from beta through alpha to low alpha/high theta. (Delta is the next step down… that’s regular sleep.) So when you’re “alert napping” you’re in a hypnotic state. This is why you’re resting, but aware of everything around you. You’re so relaxed and your brain state is altered so it “feels” like you’re in a sleep state, but you’re not really. Useful state to be able to attain, too… 20 minutes in that space is like two hours of deep sleep.
Awesome!! Now I know what I am: not a napper, but a self-hypnosis expert!
Seriously, there is not a location yet invented in which I cannot nap, including all forms of transport — even the middle seat of coach on a transatlantic flight. This is why I will never be one of those women who meets Mr Right on the train or plane, because a) I’m not awake to chat with him and b) my head is lolling to the side, my jaw is slack, and there’s a wee rivulet of drool deciding whether it wants to make the leap over the side of my half-open mouth. SOOOO attractive in a woman, I’m sure.
The alert factor also explains why, on the Midtown Direct, I never miss my stop, or sleep all the way to the Sunnyside yards. And it DOES feel like two hours; I’ll wake up on the sofa, totally refreshed and think, shit, I’ve slept too long and it will have been, like, 20 minutes.
Dee, I am also one of those people who can’t be put in a trance by an actual hypnotist. Is this common among those of us who are “alert [self-hypnotizing] nappers”?