Enlarge By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY In New York, the city that never sleeps, George Dawes Green stands in Thompkins Square Park. The author of The Juror and now Ravens has a sleep cycle that migrates until night is day and vice versa. TROUBLE SLEEPING? TROUBLE SLEEPING? More than 20 million Americans complain of insomnia, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says. Although people with chronic insomnia may need the help of a sleep specialist, experts say people who suffer from occasional insomnia can take steps to improve their sleep. Most people need seven or eight hours of sleep. Tips for achieving that: DO • Exercise in the morning several times a week. • Keep the bedroom dark, quiet, cool (75 degrees or cooler). • Get up at the same time every day. • Try to get bright light exposure in the morning, soon after waking. • Avoid bright lights at night. • Jot down worries before bedtime in a different room and then say goodnight to them. • Have a routine that prepares you for bed so your body will recognize it and want to sleep. • Use your bed only for sleeping and sex. Condition yourself to associate your bed with sleep. • Give yourself 30-60 minutes to wind down and relax before hitting the sheets. • Try a hot bath. Warming up and then cooling down can make you drowsy. • Use medications carefully, especially ones that contain stimulants or ingredients that make you drowsy. DO NOT • Go to bed unless you're sleepy. • Have a big meal before bed. • Take naps unless you have to and never after 3 p.m. • Drink alcohol within six hours of bedtime. • Take a sleeping pill for more than three weeks without consulting your physician. • Smoke a cigarette or ingest other forms of nicotine before bed. • Drink caffeine after lunch. • Workout strenuously within six hours of bedtime. • Use the bed to watch TV, talk on the phone or play videogames. • Hit the snooze button. Oversleeping will make it harder to fall asleep at night. Don't sleep late on weekends, either. Sources: American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Public Citizen, and Clete Kushida, president, American Academy of Sleep Medicine So much for counting sheep when he cannot sleep, or for trying meditative readings. Those salves might work for others who toss and turn at night, but not for George Dawes Green. The author has a rare sleep disorder that affects less than 2% of the population, experts say. His sleep schedule evolves, turning day into night and night into day. Oddly enough, Dawes takes solace in writing psychological thrillers, page-turners enriched by flawed and vulnerable souls who, like himself, he says, are captive to spells they both loathe and enjoy. In his third novel, Ravens (Grand Central Publishing, $24.99), out today, winning a $318 million lottery turns out to be a family's nightmare. "That's the way life is," Dawes says. "We are all captives. No one is happy about the IRS and all the laws we have to follow, but there are authorities that tell us what to do, and we find it a good idea to listen." What he found a good idea to obey is his disorder, called non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome, or hypernychthemeral. He tried to fight it as a child and young adult, but not now. He goes with it. "It's never easy," Dawes says. "There is always that sense (that) if only I had a regular schedule, I could get so much more done. But I couldn't be as creative. When I let myself go free — going to sleep when I want — then creativity surges through me." He says he sleeps a solid eight hours and is awake for about 17 hours — just not the same hours as everyone else. His waking changes about 20 minutes a day he adds. In other words, someone could sleep from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. during Week 1, then by Week 4 sleep from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sleep cycle askew Experts say people who have the disorder can rarely work a normal workday or have satisfying relationships — and are often mistaken for having insomnia. Dawes is single, although, he says, "I'm a very social person." He tried shift work and worked as a guard at night before he started his own business. "Most people are in sync with the external environment," says Phil Gehrman, an assistant professor of psychiatry and sleep specialist at the University of Pennsylvania. "Pretty much every process in our body follows a 24-hour circadian rhythm. "The main driving force is a nucleus in the brain. It sends out a signal to train the body and brain to follow these rhythms. In most people, those rhythms are set to a 24-hour cycle." Gehrman says the duration of the cycle can be "way different from 24 hours. You can have a period that was less than 24 hours, and you're finishing the day faster. If they have a longer rhythm, then it takes them longer biologically to complete a day." At times, Dawes' night will match up with the real night, but then his rhythm will drift and he'll be off the pace of the rest of the world. "It can be hard to adjust," Gehrman says. By using bright lights in the morning, Gehrman says, you can attempt to bring the day forward. Using melatonin at night can bring the night forward. Dawes says a New York sleep specialist suggested he try both, but "I got insomnia and couldn't sleep for days." When he learned to follow his own sleep schedule, he said life became "rich and joyful. "I always thought I was an incredibly stressed person, but found out I was not stressed if I could live with this condition." As a child, he couldn't stay awake in class. He says he didn't pass after the fourth grade and dropped out of public schools when he was a teen: "It got worse and worse. I really couldn't focus in school at all." He was a voracious reader ("loved Edgar Allan Poe and Dostoevski") and earned a high school diploma by passing the New York Regents exams. He decided early on he was a novelist, "but they were very dark novels. Now, splashes of humor create a quirky tension between good and evil in his writing. Burris is the lead detective in Ravens. He is an unassuming and smart crime solver, but he's totally out of sync with what is going on around and within him — especially when it comes to his love interest. "He was fun to work on," Dawes says. The Moth storytellers After his second book, The Juror, became a best seller (and was turned into a motion picture starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin), he set out in 1997 to re-create a storytelling group called The Moth (themoth.org) in his New York apartment. It now has several locations around the country, and the website gets a half-million downloads a month on iTunes. Participants have included Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion, Todd Hansen, head writer of The Onion, Candace Bushnell of Sex and the City, Malcolm Gladwell of The Tipping Point and Blink. "When I was in my 20s, we'd stay up all night on a friend's porch drinking bourbon and telling stories. The moths would come onto the screen and start spinning around the porch light. That's how I got the name." The Moth meets at 7:30 tonight at The Players. Dawes will be the guest of honor at Dial M for Moth: Thriller Stories and will tell a tale. Any guesses on whether the audience will be able to drift off to a peaceful sleep afterward? "I do have to worry people," he says with a laugh. "It's part of the fun." READERS: Do you ever have trouble sleeping? Share your experiences and what, if anything, has worked for you below: Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more