When does inspiration hit?

When does inspiration strike for writing? I will leave that question out there. Feel free to add your ideas. Anyone, anyone? Bueller? For me inspiration seems to hit at inconvenient times when I do not have or can not reach my pen and paper or computer keys. Typically when my brain is given a siesta from taxing tasks like in the shower, waiting in line at the grocery store, or when I'm nursing my baby. Inspiration also hits when it is supposed to, when I am sitting before a blank screen or page, but the big ideas are allowed to play out in my imagination much more fluidly, when the space in my head floats between planes. That is why dreaming can provide such fertile ground for writers. The internal editor isn't giving a critique on why your hair-brained idea is unrealistic - and I don't mean your freshman English teacher with the bifocals. It's that internal naysayer who can make great ideas vanish into thin air. Be confident, think big, let your mind wander into the caverns of the unreal. We are writing fiction after all. Time to write from a destination unknown. I think I will program myself to dream about a story and let the story find me. I'll let you know who I meet along the way. There is a character waiting to be born on my screen.

CMRN