"Watson, you look exhausted." Holmes peered at me over the top of his casebook. "Shouldn't you be getting to bed? If you get much drowsier Mrs. Hudson will have you scrubbing ink off the top of that table, come the morrow."
"I am exhausted," I admitted, blinking heavy eyes and focusing my vision with great effort. "But I just got a brainstorm for a new article and…I'm being a hypocrite, aren't I?" Putting down my pen, I turned to find his grey eyes fixed upon me.
"Indeed you are, friend Watson. So what are you going to do now?" He crossed his arms.
"Confound it," I muttered. "Do I have to be a good example?"
"If you want your words to carry any weight, then yes." He closed the book with a snap and tossed it onto the couch. "Watson, use your brain: if you do not follow the advice you give, it can't be very good advice; else you'd be following it. Now why would I want to follow bad advice? I'd be a fool."
"I have to agree with that."
"Of course you do, it's the simplest logic. So why aren't you eager to follow your own advice?"
"I suppose…well it's not like building something, where it's always a to b to c. Art, including writing, is a delicate creature and what I write now, may not be the same as what I write in the morning."
"Exactly!" He cried. "And why is that a bad thing? Answer that, and we shall have solved the riddle!"
"Because…ugh, Holmes, I can't think!"
"You must, Watson! Why can you not put off the writing? Because it will be different, yes, but why does that matter? For all you know it would be better in the morning after a good night's sleep, correct?" There was a jeering undercurrent in his words.
"I don't know!" I cried. "I just do. There's all these bits and pieces and anecdotes and I'll forget some of them if I put it off. I can't bear the thought that it will come out different from the vision I have of it now."
"Ah-ha!" He cried, jabbing his finger triumphantly in the air. "That is the answer, the word 'vision'! How can a person sleep when a vision, a clear image of what could be and in fact must be, is pressing on the inside of their eyelids! There is no sleep for the dreamer, ironically enough."
I stared at him for some time; he was smiling in a hard, bitter way.
"Well Holmes," I said finally, getting to my feet, "I'll have to sleep on this matter."
And I went to bed.
