There was an article on Yahoo news about some scientist who verified through science that Mary Shelley's story about how she saw a full moon on the night she first conceived the idea to write "Frankenstien" was in fact true. The article went on to mention that the idea came to her in what she called a "waking dream":

"she fell into a reverie of waking dream where she saw "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together." She felt the terror for the artist who endeavored "to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world" by giving the "spark of life" to a "hideous corpse." Next morning, after the poets went off sailing, she started work on what was to become chapter 4 of Frankenstein, which begins, "It was on a dreary night of November...."

I never knew that but thought it was pretty cool so I thought I'd share it on the forum. My apologies to those of you who were already aware of this.