I awake from sleep sometimes before dawn with a thought a jingle a memory... scramble to find the light, a pen and a scrap of paper to write it down before I forget. Many times I just stub my toe on the end of the bed and just fall to the floor in agony.

Boy oh boy do I have a number of stimulants and means to writing a few rambly bits and pieces.

My fav. has to be my old battered typewriter which I inherited from Grandad. It's really old now and for some reason I always fail at inserting a new ink ribbon, but there is something incredibly soothing in the way it sounds as you type away. It also makes me feel like Dylan in the mid sixties touring Highway 61 and writing Blonde on Blonde.

I do have a laptop as well which is part of the process though I normally alter anything I've written completely. Then my iPhone for when I'm on the bus or from the early days of writing when I used to write something in the back of my T.S Eliot collection.

Normally on most writing excursions I'd have a coffee and some cheesecake and if at all possible something to smoke.

Oh and I do occassionally wake up with an idea and have to scribble it down before turning over again.

Well I think that's everything covered

well I like the info, what I was really looking for was a survey like David does for the voting.  Then you see we could find out where we are, individually, away from the norm and adjust ourselves, thus instantly creating improved poems, obvious aint it?

Smoking so far appears to be the unifying factor, but not sure on sample size right now, and if we go with Davids method we gonna have to learn to smoke while sleeping which sounds like a fire hazard.

I am gonna give the cheesecake a try.