Thief of TIme - Dream Write

Jeremy stared at his bed sheets. They were covered in writing. His own writing. It trailed across the pillow and onto the wall. There were sketches, too, scored deeply into the plaster. He found his pencil under the bed. He'd even sharpened it. In his sleep, he'd sharpened a pencil! And by the look of it he'd been writing and drawing for hours.

Trying to draw a dream. With, down one side of his eiderdown, a list of parts. It had all made absolute sense when he'd seen it, like a hammer or a stick or Wheelbright's Gravity Escapement. It had been like meeting an old friend. And now... He stared at the scrawled lines. He had been writing so fast he'd ignored punctuation and some of the letters, too. But he could see some sense in there.

He'd heard of this sort of thing. Great inventions sometimes did arise from dreams and daydreams. Didn't Hepzibah Whitlow have the idea of the adjustable pendulum clock as a result of his work as the public hangman? Didn't Wilframe Balderton always say that the idea for the Fish Tail Escapement came after he'd eaten too much lobster?

Yes, it had all been so clear in the dream. By daylight, it needed a bit more work.

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The Thief of Time - p53-54