Daydreaming was my first practice at drafting and revision. I remember car rides to the grocery store, sitting in the backseat of the station wagon. I remember my daydreams: waking up one morning with curly hair like the girl in the magazine ad for Tide; hunching over the handlebars of a skinny-wheeled ten-speed bike, racing downhill; creating a new wardrobe of primary colors and white Keds. Behind the wheel in the front seat, my mom might have been daydreaming too, the back roads familiar enough to let her mind wander.

We have sweet spaces of time built for daydreaming and thinking. In college I began running longer and longer distances, mapping twenty-mile routes through the middle of nowhere. I ran with a tape deck once because my CD player wouldn’t fit in my Camelbak. Yes. A dubbed tape. But aside from that anomaly, my long runs were open to whatever thought flitted through my mind. I counted to a thousand, and then back down. When I started using the time to think about pieces I had in workshop, running and writing became more tangibly connected.

We often return to the same daydreams or thoughts, just as in our notebooks. In the back seat, the underbrush or open fields flying by, I could start over: change small parts of my fantasy, reconstruct dialogue.

But give yourself those sweet spaces. I made a list of times or places where I can let my mind wander. Do the same. Unplug for five or ten minutes of waiting in a line, turn off the radio on your drive home or keep the TV off for an evening. Let quiet and boredom invade. Make a practice of this. Find a question or an answer. Write a story in your head and take it to the page. Pray.

A while ago, I read “In Defense of Boredom” by Carolyn Y. Johnson in The Week, first published in The Boston Globe as “The Joy of Boredom.” I read it with a kind of AmenPreachIt response. Take a moment to read the piece.