Do you dream? Vividly? Regularly? What do tend to dream about? Do your dreams inform your writing?
11 thoughts on “Reader Friday: Dreamland”
Sometimes I wake up and check myself for bruises or scars. Sometimes I check to make sure my wife or kids are okay. Other times I stare at my wife and smile. Often I walk through the day wondering the dreams meant. Sometimes I walk through the hoping I am wrong about the meaning. A few times I modified my routes of travel and was justified.
Do I dream? Yes.
Does it inform my writing? Yes.
Yes I dream very vividly. A common occurrence is me waking up and saying out loud, “you know none of that was real, correct?” For a while my dream life was so vivid that it was like I had two sets of memories of two concurrent lives.
Hmmm . . . plot bunny?
And, why yes, I have insomnia. Thank you for asking.
Terri
Wasn’t there a Sandra Bullock movie like that? Where the character couldn’t tell when she was awake and when dreaming?
I remember something like that and I thought, “Whoa, did they see my dream life?”
Exactly. Without going into maudlin detail, chunks of childhood memories are very fuzzy, just flashes.
However, I dream about very specific places and revisit them often.
One evening I was talking to me brother about making the hometown pilgrimmage. I pulled up google maps and went hunting for old neighborhoods. I used “street view” and found myself “standing” in front of a house I had visited in my dreams dozens of times.
You don’t dream anything you haven’t absorbed in some way. Your brain has to keep making stories, and without the day’s input, it goes and sees what has gotten caught in the filters.
I don’t dream, but I have the idea of things occurring. Once, my husband shook me awake and he had the fear of God look on his face. I was confused and asked what was wrong. He asked me if I was having a nightmare.
All I could remember is I was horrified that something was happening, but I don’t know what it was or anything. It was a feeling and not really a dream. Apparently the noise that came out of me was a cross between a muffled scream and a howling animal.
I dream regularly. Vividly? You bet. I occasionally have some difficulty separating dreams from reality. I also dream episodically: I’ll wake up, try to shake things off, go back to bed, and pick up where I left off. I also will intermittently revisit the places where the dreams are set. And yes, dreaming informs my writing.
Extremely vividly. Long, complex, layered thrillers are the stuff of my dream life. Last night friends were seeking refuge in my house (a rambling fortress peopled with WW II re-enactors, for some reason), because they were afraid of a shadowy presence in the neighborhood. The house had all kinds of clever James-Bondish techniques for fending off bad guys. Very entertaining stuff!
I rarely dream, probably mostly because I don’t get enough sleep at night–maybe 5-6 hours on average so I’m pretty exhausted and too tired for even dreaming.
I do have dreams once in a while. Short stupid, “Huh?” type dreams. LOL!
Although recently had had a more bizarre dream and when I woke up, somehow the thought I came away with was that if I was offered a job in some educational institution to pass on it.
Unfortunately, to my recollection, I don’t recall dreams informing my writing.
BK Jackson
I keep a notepad bedside and scribble down dreams that I can remember. The feelings that I experience while dreaming seem to resonate more than the dreams themselves.
A few nights ago was the first time a lead character in my writing appeared. He’s not a nice man. He made a brief appearance, didn’t speak, glanced at me then turned and walked away. I wish he’d come back
I often dream, and my dreams are vivid and wild. Some are so realistic that it has taken me hours or days to realize the events in them actually were a dream and not reality. Others (like the one KL described) are like movies. I dreamed a really cool SF movie a few weeks back, although I no longer remember it. Some are audio only, others are words visualized and scrolling with no sound. They are frequently in exotic locations. They may be named locations on earth, but in no way resemble the actual places. I travel in planes to get to those places, and the airports and air corridors are so bizarre they would never get past any sane airport design commitee. Strangely enough the planes are always standard 737s, A 320s, A 330s (but never a 340), etc. They don’t affect my writing, although I sure do wish I could remember that SF movie from the other week.
JSB Here’s a question for one of your upcoming e-pub columns: If Amazon (and others) succeed in being allowed to sell “used” e-books, what effect do you think this will have on an author’s ability to earn monies through e-pub? Especially if they are sold on the model that used books are now, with no remuneration to the author and/or publisher?
Absolutely dreams are paramount. My dreamworld is populated by a krew called The Woodshop Boys. This is like King’s Boys in the Basement, only mine are in the Woodshop.
So I gotta problem or something needs serious cooking, I send it to the Woodshop Boys just as I’m going to sleep. Most often, I wake up with an answer. Sometimes it’s not The Answer, but it’s something.
Sometimes I wake up and check myself for bruises or scars. Sometimes I check to make sure my wife or kids are okay. Other times I stare at my wife and smile. Often I walk through the day wondering the dreams meant. Sometimes I walk through the hoping I am wrong about the meaning. A few times I modified my routes of travel and was justified.
Do I dream? Yes.
Does it inform my writing? Yes.
Yes I dream very vividly. A common occurrence is me waking up and saying out loud, “you know none of that was real, correct?” For a while my dream life was so vivid that it was like I had two sets of memories of two concurrent lives.
Hmmm . . . plot bunny?
And, why yes, I have insomnia. Thank you for asking.
Terri
Wasn’t there a Sandra Bullock movie like that? Where the character couldn’t tell when she was awake and when dreaming?
I remember something like that and I thought, “Whoa, did they see my dream life?”
Exactly. Without going into maudlin detail, chunks of childhood memories are very fuzzy, just flashes.
However, I dream about very specific places and revisit them often.
One evening I was talking to me brother about making the hometown pilgrimmage. I pulled up google maps and went hunting for old neighborhoods. I used “street view” and found myself “standing” in front of a house I had visited in my dreams dozens of times.
You don’t dream anything you haven’t absorbed in some way. Your brain has to keep making stories, and without the day’s input, it goes and sees what has gotten caught in the filters.
I don’t dream, but I have the idea of things occurring. Once, my husband shook me awake and he had the fear of God look on his face. I was confused and asked what was wrong. He asked me if I was having a nightmare.
All I could remember is I was horrified that something was happening, but I don’t know what it was or anything. It was a feeling and not really a dream. Apparently the noise that came out of me was a cross between a muffled scream and a howling animal.
I dream regularly. Vividly? You bet. I occasionally have some difficulty separating dreams from reality. I also dream episodically: I’ll wake up, try to shake things off, go back to bed, and pick up where I left off. I also will intermittently revisit the places where the dreams are set. And yes, dreaming informs my writing.
Extremely vividly. Long, complex, layered thrillers are the stuff of my dream life. Last night friends were seeking refuge in my house (a rambling fortress peopled with WW II re-enactors, for some reason), because they were afraid of a shadowy presence in the neighborhood. The house had all kinds of clever James-Bondish techniques for fending off bad guys. Very entertaining stuff!
I rarely dream, probably mostly because I don’t get enough sleep at night–maybe 5-6 hours on average so I’m pretty exhausted and too tired for even dreaming.
I do have dreams once in a while. Short stupid, “Huh?” type dreams. LOL!
Although recently had had a more bizarre dream and when I woke up, somehow the thought I came away with was that if I was offered a job in some educational institution to pass on it.
Unfortunately, to my recollection, I don’t recall dreams informing my writing.
BK Jackson
I keep a notepad bedside and scribble down dreams that I can remember. The feelings that I experience while dreaming seem to resonate more than the dreams themselves.
A few nights ago was the first time a lead character in my writing appeared. He’s not a nice man. He made a brief appearance, didn’t speak, glanced at me then turned and walked away. I wish he’d come back
I often dream, and my dreams are vivid and wild. Some are so realistic that it has taken me hours or days to realize the events in them actually were a dream and not reality. Others (like the one KL described) are like movies. I dreamed a really cool SF movie a few weeks back, although I no longer remember it. Some are audio only, others are words visualized and scrolling with no sound. They are frequently in exotic locations. They may be named locations on earth, but in no way resemble the actual places. I travel in planes to get to those places, and the airports and air corridors are so bizarre they would never get past any sane airport design commitee. Strangely enough the planes are always standard 737s, A 320s, A 330s (but never a 340), etc. They don’t affect my writing, although I sure do wish I could remember that SF movie from the other week.
JSB Here’s a question for one of your upcoming e-pub columns: If Amazon (and others) succeed in being allowed to sell “used” e-books, what effect do you think this will have on an author’s ability to earn monies through e-pub? Especially if they are sold on the model that used books are now, with no remuneration to the author and/or publisher?
Absolutely dreams are paramount. My dreamworld is populated by a krew called The Woodshop Boys. This is like King’s Boys in the Basement, only mine are in the Woodshop.
So I gotta problem or something needs serious cooking, I send it to the Woodshop Boys just as I’m going to sleep. Most often, I wake up with an answer. Sometimes it’s not The Answer, but it’s something.