Sleep Deprivation and Storytelling: The Ugly Truth

    Buckle up buttercup, this is gunna be a long one.

    There’s this romanticized idea that writers thrive on chaos. You’ve seen it in movies, in memes, in the way people joke about surviving on nothing but caffeine, nicotine, cold pizza, and “the muse”, that has jokes. We laugh at all the misconceptions of what a writer/ author physically looks like. Why? Because it's funny, and unfortunately, there is a small or large grain of truth to it. But there’s a darker side to it that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. Sleep deprivation isn’t just some quirky “writer's life” tag line. It’s brutal. It’s ugly. And sometimes, it’s dangerous.

I’m not talking about the occasional late night where you’re in the zone and lose track of time. Or when you wake in the middle of the night needing to write something down, before you lose it. Then BAM, it's 6:15am and it’s time to get the kids up and ready for school. 

 I’m talking about days on end of being barely able to function because your brain refuses to shut down. Life, kicking you in ass after said late night, and now, you don’t get the chance to rest because you have other shit that needs your attention. 

For me, it’s usually a mix of both. Parenting, deadlines, and emotional overload collide until I’m staring at the ceiling at 3am, counting down the hours until I have to get up and do it all over again. A tightness in my chest is growing, because I think I’m letting everyone down. Then my mind shifts so hard into fifth gear you’d swear you heard the gears grind.

And let me tell you, writing through that kind of fog isn’t glamorous. It’s a war. War with fictional characters that scream loud enough to crack pains of glass. War with the setting because if I do it this way or that way it might not be believable. War with myself over the imposter syndrome, that seems to creep in just as shits going down. 

When I sit down at the keyboard after three hours of broken sleep, the words come out differently. Sometimes they flow too fast, like a dam cracked open and everything I’ve been holding back pours onto the page, unfiltered and raw. Other times, it’s like pulling teeth without novocaine. Slow, Painful, and Jagged while you're screaming and crying. 

The strange thing about writing while sleep-deprived is that the voice in your head doesn’t shut up, but your ability to catch it and shape it into something coherent falters. You end up with pieces of brilliance tangled in nonsense. Whole paragraphs where you go back the next day and think: Wow. That’s either the most honest thing I’ve ever written or complete garbage. Possibly both.

That’s the ugly truth: sleep deprivation doesn’t just affect your body; it twists your storytelling. And sometimes, the work you produce in those dark hours can’t be replicated in the light of day. Which becomes frustrating, if you finally found the voice for that one damn character that doesn’t seem to sound right at any other time.  

Now, let's talk about how the human husk starts keeping score.

Sleep deprivation doesn’t just make you cranky. It wrecks your body. The headaches, the short fuse, the endless coffee jitters that do nothing but dig you into a deeper hole. All of it adds up. And as much as I love being “the strong one,” I’ve had to learn (the hard way) that my body always cashes the checks my sleepless nights write. Which constantly leaves me owing spoons and/or fucks to give.

For me, it’s the shakes in my hands when I type too long. The pain in my wrists that seem to go up my arm from trying to keep my hands on home row. The crash that hits out of nowhere when I finally sit down after a day of sprinting from one task to the next. My patience with the people I love wears razor thin, and that guilt lingers far longer than the exhaustion itself. Sleep deprivation makes me feel like I’m failing twice. Once in the moment, and again when I see the fallout.

Storytelling on Empty isn’t something we talk about but we have all experienced it one way or another.

Here’s the catch: sleep deprivation doesn’t stop me from doing my job as a writer or parent. In fact, sometimes it fuels it. The ugly truth is that some of my rawest, most gut-punching scenes have come from nights when I was too tired to put up my usual walls. Exhaustion strips away the polish. It drags your subconscious into the spotlight and says: Okay, you’re too tired to censor this. Let’s go. 

That’s when characters reveal truths I wasn’t planning on. That’s when villains start sounding like people I know in real life. That’s when the plot twists cut a little deeper because they’re born from a place I wouldn’t touch if I had my full defenses up. But there’s a cost.

Every time I write on empty, I’m borrowing against tomorrow and all the other tomorrows. And eventually, tomorrow shows up wanting interest, a formal apology, and dinner. 

The Balance I Haven’t Mastered, so don’t feel bad if you haven’t either. After all, we are being honest here. 

I wish I could wrap this post up with some tidy advice like: Go to bed earlier! or Make sleep part of your self-care routine! But that wouldn’t be honest. The truth is, I haven’t mastered this balance. I probably never will as long as my “Office” is less than 10 steps from my bed. Because in my life there is no work like balance, there is only “Get up and do the damn thing” no matter what the “damn thing” happens to be. 

I write because I want and need to. I parent because I love my Gremlin more than anything. I push through the exhaustion because life doesn’t stop just because I’m tired, or had a bad day. And if I wait for the “perfect” rested moment to write, I might never write at all. Let’s face facts “perfection” is highly over rated. The mess and chaos are what make life worth living, when your body is screaming “you’ve lost your damn mind”.

So, I make peace with the ugly truth: some nights will bleed into mornings, and some mornings will start with Red Bull in hand, a cigarette hanging out of my mouth, and a messy bun from the day before instead of the put together MOM. My words will sometimes come out jagged, sometimes brilliant, sometimes both. That’s part of the deal I’ve struck with myself as both a writer and a human being surviving not only on but also with the chaos.

Why Do I Keep Going?

At the end of the day (or night), the stories matter. My son matters. My survival matters. And if the cost of telling the truth — in my life, in my fiction, in my blog posts — is a few more sleepless nights, then I’ll pay it. Because when push comes to shove, I know I have a gift. I have the ability to make others see, feel and experience something. And what kind of person would I be if I kept that to myself. Selfish that’s what I’d be.

But I’ll also admit, here in the raw light of honesty, that I’m tired. I’m bone-deep tired. And I know some of you reading this are too.

So maybe the only real advice I can offer is this: give yourself grace. If you’re writing through exhaustion, if you’re stumbling through the day, if you’re holding it all together with caffeine and stubbornness, and the will to not end up on an episode of SNAPPED, you’re not alone. The stories will come. They always do. The house will eventually get cleaned. It always does. The kids will be fed. Even in the ugly truth of sleep deprivation, everything finds a way.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s where the most real storytelling happens. Drop some comments about your struggle bus moments.

REMEMBER:

Be Brave, Be Bold, But Always Stay Humble.