Haiku in My Sleep

I have been participating in PiBoIdMo. I have been faithfully coming up with a picture book idea every day. I keep thinking I'll be warmed up and ready to go when the Picture Book Marathon starts in February.

The good news is that I have had lots of ideas flowing. The bad news is, I didn't sleep last night. You know, when those crazy words run through your head and you can't get them out? That's the kind of night I had.

Here's how it happened:

I was composing haiku last night. I'm teaching haiku to my fourth graders right now. At night, I've been writing haiku and brainstorming ideas for my own haiku book. I was so tired, but I composed a haiku about earthworms when I was half-asleep. I tapped out the syllables with my eyelids. It was great. I was too lazy to roll over and write it down in the dark.

So I memorized it.

But you know how that goes.... You sometimes forget when the morning rolls around. Then sometimes, when the morning does roll around, what you wrote doesn't seem very good anyway.

That darn haiku kept me up all night. I woke up four times reciting it to myself. The cool thing? I remembered it this morning. I wrote it down as soon as I woke up.

Even better news? It seemed just as magical this morning as it did last night when I wrote it when my syllabic eyelids wouldn't leave me alone.