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I’m absolutely convinced that I am the world’s most efficient and productive writer–that is, if I could do all my writing while lying bed, trying to go to sleep. In that 30 minutes to an hour between the time I set my book down or turn off the TV, I can compose pages upon pages of fabulous material: new ideas, blog posts, responses to particularly insightful or infuriating articles I read during the day, revisions. Some nights, if my mind is really going, this will keep me awake for hours.

When I started grad school, I used to say that I do most of my writing while walking around. That worked well when I had a full-time job, because I did spend a lot of time walking, to and from work, on lunch break, cruising around the office, trying to look busy. And when I finally sat down at a computer, I could always count on a few uninterrupted minutes to spill whatever brilliant sentences had formed in my brain. Now, 90 percent of what I compose in my head never reaches a word processor. If something dawns on me during the day, it’s quickly wiped from memory by the vapors from a dirty diaper or that incessant Go Diego Go theme song. If I dream up a new ending for The Sopranos while lying in bed, I might resolve to put it in the vault for the next day, but when I wake up, all I can think about is how badly I need to pee.

As an acolyte of David Allen and his Getting Things Done system for personal productivity, I know an easy solution to this problem. A main component of Allen’s system (I’d say the most crucial one) is what he calls “capture,” i.e. writing everything down. As soon as you think, “Hey, I should get this rash checked out,” write it down, so you can find this note later and turn it into a task like “Call Dr. Nick about VD.” To facilitate this, GTD nerds all over the web have come up with dozens of ingenious methods for making sure you always have a way to jot down reminders, from notebooks to PDAs to stacks of index cards. Lately, I’ve taken to writing things down on index cards too, which I toss into my inbox so I look at them at least once a day when I go through my mail and receipts. This works for things like “buy more milk” and “email Rob to say Carlos Zambrano sucks,” but not for dictating my next New Yorker submission. There’s only so much you can fit onto a 3 x 5 card.

I’ve tried other solutions, like keeping a full-sized notebook on the night stand or even getting out of bed to run downstairs to the computer. But the words never come out as beautifully as they appeared in my mind. If I try to condense it into a few notes on a piece of paper, something gets lost in translation. The next day I look at my scribbling and think, “What the hell?” If I run to the computer, something about the white glow of the screen in the dark gives me stage fright, and I’m never able to squeeze out much more than two sentences. Meanwhile, that perfect idea drifts away.

In Cory Doctorow’s novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a story about Disney World Imagineers set well into the future, people (at least the wealthy ones with clean records) have a network interface built right into their brains. All one has to do to send an email, make a phone call, or access a database is think about it. Aside from the obvious slippery slope this would create for our always-on, gadget-addicted society, I like to dream about what this would do for my word count. If I could just lie in bed, letting my unconscious mind spill its thoughts into an ever-waiting text document, I’d crank out pages like Proust on crystal meth. My waking mind would become more of an editor, collating chapters and essays deposited on his desktop every morning by this mystery writer, who is either a vampire or lives in Japan (or perhaps, all the better, both).

So somebody get to work on that, and let me know when you’re finished. I remember a part in The Matrix about computers and brains too, if that helps. In the meantime, some tips about keeping a better notebook might be sufficient.