Under the heading of "inspiration", the author A E van Vogt had a method involving waking himself up several times a night. His Wikipedia entry[1] describes it

Under the heading of "inspiration", the author A E van Vogt had a method involving waking himself up several times a night. His Wikipedia entry[1] describes it as "he arranged to be awakened every 90 minutes during his sleep period so he could write down his dreams", which sounds like an output process, but in an interview [2] it sounds like an input process: "When I was working on a story, I would waken myself every hour and a half, through the night--force myself to wake up, think of the story, try to solve it, and even as I was thinking about it I would fall back asleep. And in the morning, there would be a solution, for that particular story problem." However his output was notably different from other writers (by reports[1]) so it may not generalise. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._van_Vogt#Method_and_themes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._van_Vogt#Method_and_them... [2] http://www.icshi.net/worlds/Plattprofile.htm http://www.icshi.net/worlds/Plattprofile.htm