In an article he wrote for the Guardian, the author Chuck Palahniuk shared his theory about insomnia being a sort of muse for creative people like himself. Palahniuk, well-known for his novel Fight Club, whose protagonist who suffers from insomnia because of job stress and frequent travel for work, suggests that writers are inspired by things that are related to shock or suffering. “Fasting works. Rejection, too. Insomnia works wonderfully,” Palahniuk wrote.
According to Palahniuk, Fight Club was inspired by his own insomnia. “In 1993, I found myself stranded in Reno, Nevada, with no money and nowhere to stay,” Palahniuk wrote. “At night I wandered sleepless through the empty all-night casinos and restaurants, exhausted, delirious, and inventing a story about a man who thought he had insomnia but was actually living a double life: whenever he thought he was asleep, his alter ego would venture forth to have all the adventures he, himself, could never consciously dare.”
Palahniuk recognized, though, that the insomnia lifestyle is not a healthy one. “To be honest, Ambien helps me sleep more nights than I care to admit — although I’m uncertain about the quality of that sleep,” he wrote.