In other words, memories which are not part of active, daily awareness are relived during REM sleep so that we can remember them when needed. The trick of artistic inspiration is to recover this buried material while awake, in all its cinematic, full five senses detail. Little is known about how information from the senses is stored and recalled. We know sense memory connects with emotional memory in strange ways. Proust ate a tea cake one afternoon and its scent triggered a whole lifetime of memories, eight volumes' worth.
Writers teach themselves to observe, putting their sense memories into Olympic training.
No matter how well you take notes or photos, most of what you write about must be first captured in your sense memory. Away from their desks, many writers are able to put a large number of words into short term memory. The phrases will stay with me for about thirty minutes. If I cannot find a pencil in that time, my muse assumes I was just kidding and goes to visit a writer down the block. This was my first trip to Italy, but this small harbor, with its elegant boutiques and jewel-box hotels, seemed familiar.