September Shorts: Alpha States, Navigation and The Green Mile

In my copy of Stephen King’s The Green Mile, King writes about how he structures stories as he’s trying to go to sleep each night. Here he is: “I tell [them] as I lie in the dark, writing them in my mind just as I would on a typewriter… Each night I start over at the beginning, getting a little further before I drop off.”

That’s me too. It was only recently, though, that I heard the phrase alpha state to describe that relaxed, almost dream-like frame of mind in which we are more creative and receptive; less critical and convergent in our thinking. Finding out that something you do - a place to which you go as you drop off - has a proper name and everything... well that somehow gives it credence.

At the moment I'm starting each night by conjuring up an imaginary pine-locked mountain town called Navigation, for a project that may or may not ever emerge from its chrysalis. It seems, for me at least, that this alpha-state pre-sleep stage is a sort of testing ground for ideas. If it's not a pleasure going to sleep thinking them through, or if they quickly become tiresome, they're returned to the netherworld from which they came. 

​Fingers crossed for Navigation. I like it a lot.