Do you ever have one of those nights when your body craves sleep but your mind won’t cooperate? The solution is to distract your mind. Don’t let it wander toward topics that are troubling or stimulating.

As a writer, I can start to map out in my mind my next blog or the next chapter in a novel. The writing process is so boring and exhausting that sleep soon follows. Writers will do anything, even sleep, to avoid writing.

If you are not a writer, you can try playing a game that some of my writer friends play. To play the game, think of the title of a book or movie, and then come up with a new title by adding a single letter. English is a funny language. Adding a single letter to a title can suggest a totally different story.

For example, here are some titles with a single letter added:

The Beagle Has Landed

Star Warts

Start Wars

The Least of the Mohicans

A Christmas Carl

The Princess Bridge

A Farewell to Farms

Bratman

Alternatively, you can come up with a new story by dropping a letter from a title:

Ale of Two Cities

The Prince and the Paper

The Fat and The Furious

Seeping Beauty

Brave New Word

One with the Wind

Now White

Far from the Adding Crowd

Of Ice and Men

Animal Arm

Oliver Twit

Leak House

The War of the Words

All Quit on the Western Front

Or you can change a title by changing one letter to a different letter:

The Old Map and the Sea

The Amazing Face

The Lord of the Sings

The Three Little Figs

Beauty and the Feast

The Son Also Rises

Little Horse on the Prairie

War and Peach

Jars

Back to the Suture

Be warned. If you come up with a good one, by all means resist the temptation to get up and write it down. That would defeat the purpose.