“Sleep on it” can be wise advice when you are trying to generate ideas and solve problems. One well established technique for tapping into your creative power is to concentrate on and write about your goal or problem for the last hour before you go to bed. Here are the steps:

First, identify the objective or problem you are trying to solve. Describe it succinctly. Write it at the top of a sheet of paper or at the top of the page on your monitor. For example, when I was writing The First Forest, I wrote at the top a piece of paper: “I see the first forest. I see the tree maker, very kind, very loving towards his trees. He sees them all as beautiful and tries to teach them all that they are indeed beautiful. But some don’t believe they are beautiful, not beautiful enough, anyway. They want to be bigger and better and more beautiful than all the other trees. So they stretch out their limbs and knock off each other's leaves and branches reaching for more, more rain, more sunlight — and destroy the peace and beauty of the forest in the process. How can it be restored?” It probably is better to use a pen or pencil rather than a computer at this stage because doodling can be very helpful for activating the right brain, the idea center. There also is a tactile dimension to scribbling with a pen or pencil that computers don’t accommodate as well. We are sensate beings, and there is a tactile dimension to using our full powers. Writing devices influence what we create. Martin Luther King wrote what is arguably the most beautiful and important piece of literature in the twentieth century on newspaper margins and scraps of paper in a jail cell. (I strongly recommend his Letter From A Birmingham Jail to others and try to reread it myself every week or so.)

Second, read your succinct description of your objective or problem. Think about it, doodle, write about it for an hour, then quit and go to bed.

Third, rise an hour earlier than usual if necessary the next day and spend the first hour thinking about it, doodling, and writing about it.

Continue the process for as many days as necessary. I am aware of the counsel not to become engaged in serious work the last hours before going to bed and do not recommend this approach every day/night of your life, just when you have some particularly challenging question or problem or creative goal. — from Work In Progress — Spring 2009 by John Gile