Brainstorms and Epiphanies

It never fails. I finally turn the TV off and start to attempt to go to sleep and my brain suddenly is wide awake. It kicks into overdrive, analyzing the days events and preparing for those to come. It's in these moments that most of my ideas for my writing seem to pop up.

One problem with that, I usually can't remember them the next morning. So I have to silently crawl over my hubby, sneak over to my desk and jot down a few lines to jog my memory in the morning. Of course when I get to the morning the note I scribbled looks like a five year old's handwriting and it's barely discernible, but somehow I manage to decipher it and expand on the idea further. I just wish my brain would work like that when I'm sitting, staring at an empty page in Word, trying to think of something to write.

Another situation that seems to happen more often than not is when I'm having a conversation with someone and a word or phrase they say sparks a solution to a problem I had been having in my writing. The epiphany occurs and I try desperately to listen but all the while my brain is writing a whole chapter in my book. Again, why don't these things happen when I want them to. Such is the life of a writer I guess.

Do you have similar problems/situations such as these?