Late night/early morning inspirations

I wonder if most writers are insomniacs.... I certainly am and what's worse, I'm also a light sleeper. So, I have a lot of sleep related issues. Last night was one of those nights when I woke up for no apparent reason and couldn't go back to sleep. By the time I decided to come down to the living room, an hour had passed already.

I came down, sat with my laptop trying to solve my ending dilemma. I'm struggling with the last chapter (or possibly last two chapters) of my new book. It's just not strong enough. OR as strong as I want it to be and I was completely lost as to how to fix that problem. Well, last night, an idea finally came to me to fix the problem at ~5:20 am in the morning! I quickly jot it down in my notebook and tried to get some sleep. I'm a stay-at-home mom who needs to be functional in the morning. This is why the idea still needs to be written into the book.

The problem is this. My book is about lives of women, with historical events anchoring the book. At the end of the book, I'm dealing with the Korean War and the more I learn about it, the more fascinating it gets. Anyhow, the whole Korean War is in effect derailing my book. It's taking the story away from the women and I want a more elegant way of weaving the men's stories from the Korean War and the women's stories from home. I just need time to write the final couple of chapters (and it's the most precious commodity).

I wonder if it's like that for most of the writers...the best ideas come at the most inconvenient moments of the day. Well, at least I've got my fix.

Waiting for Appa update:

I had a great talk at the New Haven Unified School District's Adult School class on Monday. I was very excited to be there. I sent the instructor a review copy of my book and she had used it to teach her class spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. The instructor was gracious and the students were attentive. They had a lot of good questions for me and what overwhelmed me was the fact that every single people there put in a whole day's of work before coming to school that evening. What an honor to be there!

I was inspired by them. I have so much respect for them. They reminded me of my parents who had a great work ethic and a tremendous drive to make something of themselves. They laid the foundation for me to pursue my dreams. I need to do more of these talks....