The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: dreams

  • Dreams: The Free-loading Bitches Who Won’t Help Me Write

    For whatever reason, my dreams refuse to be helpful.

    I know there are some authors who claim they get brilliant ideas from dreams. I don’t necessarily hate those people, but I haven’t met them in person either, so I’m not prepared to say we’d be friends.

    I’ve also read at least one article that recommended sleeping as a way to work through your plotting problems. The idea was that you should think about your story, specifically focusing on those areas that were causing you trouble, as you were lying in bed at night. Presumably, you’d eventually fall asleep (after you finally got over the agony of being stuck on a scene that clearly just wanted to be an asshole), and your brain would continue to search for solutions while your body got the rest it needed.

    Then, at some point, either by dream or some early morning/late night revelation, you’d experience a breakthrough. You would have the answers you so desperately needed, and you and your story would live happily ever after, or at least experience some mild feelings of contentment until the next time it decided to dig in its heels and act like a fuckhead.

    That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? To be able to lay your head down on the pillow and then wake up in the morning with fresh ideas and a clear outline of your plot. It would be like some awesome version of the tooth fairy. One whose visit didn’t require a painful, bloody sacrifice followed by the inevitable letdown when you realize her cheap ass is on a one-quarter-per-tooth kind of budget.

    I’d love to be wired that way. But I’m not. My dreams are lazy, free-loading bitches who contribute almost nothing to my fiction.

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  • Awakening Without a Dream

    Dreams slip from my mind upon waking like dry sand through my fingers, leaving only the memory that they had been there. I wake with the memory that my sleep was filled with fascinating dreams but I have never been able to recall the details. Any attempts I make only succeed to chase them further from my mind. To this date, I can only vividly recall two dreams and both of them nightmares from my childhood. Dreams that left me screaming as I woke, too terrified to sleep.

    I have woken knowing I have dreamed that dream before. Yet still I have no recollection of what the dream itself was. My mind lives a dual life in my sleep, one that I will never recall.

    I’m slowly learning to accept this, though I find that I frequently will attempt to force myself back into sleep in hopes of continuing the dream I was having. Because even though I do not know what it was that I dreamed, I remember that I enjoyed it. That I wanted to experience it again. Perhaps I live in hopes that if I manage to complete the dream, that will be the one that I remember upon waking. (more…)

  • It’s Easier to Dream

    So, one morning I turned on PBS for the child, sat on the couch, and fell asleep. I’d love to give you a time of year or a month or anything, but this is happens so often that I could probably start every day of my life with the same line.

    When I startle awake, I remember one scene in particular: two heavy aircraft (air limo sort of nonsense, really) on a tight curve, racing around a building. As on pilot rams and cripples the other aircraft in an attempt to pull ahead of his bitter rival, he finds out there’s a baby in the crashing aircraft. He rushes to land, desperate to get the baby out, but the cops are already there when he gets down.

    If this sounds familiar, is should — it was the story seed that would become my NaNoWriMo 2012 novel.

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  • What’s Your Dream Writing Assignment?

    Every week we’ll ask the Confabulators a question that may further illuminate the blog question or give you some further insight into our working minds. This week’s question is one that a lot of writers have stuck somewhere in the back of his or her mind. Not everyone wants to work for someone else, or even write a character that’s not theirs, but certainly there’s something that fires our imaginations. Writers that dream are the best kind.

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  • I Got 99 Ideas but My Hair Ain’t One

    Not what I had in mind

    I always thought the idea thing was a silly question. Worse, I thought it was a cliché, and that nobody ever really asked it. Then a hair stylist (not my regular lady, mind you, somebody new who, apparently, wasn’t sure what to talk about with me while she screwed up my hair) came right out and asked me where I get my ideas.

    I have to admit, I was surprised. In all the dream scenarios where I imagined I was a successful writer, this never came up. I was unprepared. I stammered for a second, then I spit out the first thing that came to my mind.

    “Well, you know,” I said in a conspiratorial whisper, “we’re all insane.”

    It wasn’t at all surprising this answer didn’t satisfy her a bit.

    “I’m just so fascinated with you creative types,” she said. “I guess I don’t have that much imagination.”

    This was made clear once I saw her finished product in the mirror. Somehow my telling her that my hair should look “like I just had sex” translated in her mind to “like I’m on my way to an ‘80s reunion and want to look like a French poodle.”

    I think my problem is I didn’t quite understand the question. I always assumed everyone was picking out pieces of conversation at the next table in a restaurant. I thought everybody was making up a story in their head about the guy walking his dog in the middle of a downpour. I figured everyone remembered snippets of their dreams in the morning and used the pieces to create other worlds.

    Apparently, not everyone is. And that’s okay. If everybody’s brain functioned the same way, it would be a boring world. So, to all the people genuinely curious about where a weirdo like me gets her ideas, I will answer as honestly as I can.

    Ideas come from everywhere.  They come from childhood fears nurtured far into adulthood. They come from broken bits of dialogue overheard in the grocery store. They come from dreams, television shows, movies, games, and books.

    But most of all, they come from you. When you talk to me, there’s always at least a tiny part of my brain listening to how you breathe, watching how your fingers twitch when you talk, and examining that splotch of gravy on your collar.

    Collecting ideas is easy. The tricky part is figuring out which one out of 1000 is worth closer examination.

  • People from the future are waiting in the bathroom

    There’s a voice I hear whenever a door opens. It tells me that this time I won’t see what I expect.

    What's in my head
    Every door is another possibility

    Instead of seeing the second floor and the hallway leading to my office, I’ll see a park. Instead of shopping mall, I’ll be in a prison. Instead of a bathroom, I’ll find myself in a waiting room with people from the future.

    People ask writers where they get their ideas. And I wonder what people who aren’t writers think about all day.

    I’m constantly imagining other people and places. I think about names for stories, titles for novels. I pick up words the way a numismatist picks up coins, turning them over and examining them from every side.

    Everything is a potential story, a character, or a setting. The problem is not in finding ideas, but in wading through the overwhelming possibilities to find ideas that are worth exploring.

    But the best ideas come to me when I let my imagination cut loose. For me, this comes easiest when my editor is shut off — or shut out — so I can’t second guess myself. It shouldn’t be surprising that I get my best ideas when I’m dreaming.

    A few months ago, I awoke from a dream about a female superhero. She was new to the business and she didn’t  know her teammates very well. She kept referring to one of them as “the blue guy.” They worked together to save a large group of children from the evil rat king. It was all very odd.

    It became the foundation for the novel I’m currently writing. Most of the details have changed, but the dream was still the starting point. Without the dream, I might never have considered writing in the superhero genre.

    It doesn’t matter where you get your ideas from — whether you get inspired by long, hot showers or digging through trash. Inspiration comes to each person differently. The important thing is that you allow yourself a chance to be inspired.

    Robert Penn Warren once said, “You must cultivate leisure.”

    This is essential to being a writer. To be open to the story ideas around you, your mind must be ready to accept them. If you don’t allow your mind to relax, you’ll never be able to hear the still, small voice of your muse.