A Subconscious Partner in Writing

Last week I started reading The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek, Volume 1, by Edward Gross and Mark Altman.  Overall, it's a good book, but there was one quote that caught my attention because of its familiarity and suddenly making me feel less crazy.  

JACKIE COON FERNANDEZ

His way of writing was going to bed with the thought in his head of what he had to come up with, and then it was there when he got up. It was just there. He went from sleeping soundly to getting up feeling fresh, and it just came out of his fingers onto the typewriter and he just never had to think about it.

Jackie was referring to Gene Coon, a writer for the original Star Trek series.

Allowing my subconscious to do the heavy lifting has been my approach to not just writing, but other problems that need solving.  It might sound like "sleeping on it," but I think this is a little different.  It's trusting a part of you that is under no direct control to perform miracles, or at least it can seem that way when it works, which is more often than not.

Of course, I'm not popping amphetamines, but I'm not under Gene Roddenberry's whip either.