Thursday, March 24, 2011

Do You Remember Your Dreams?

When Maureen had me fill out the questionnaire for Get Lost in a Story blog one of the questions was do you remember your dreams?
I always remember my dreams. Or at least I think I do. But I also know that I can have several in one night.

I have vivid, action packed story driven dreams. Sometimes scary, sometimes adventures. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with a sense of exhaustion like I’m Indiana Jones and have just recovered the lost ark.

Every time I think… can that be a book? Crazily enough I can even analyze that mid-dream. While I’m dreaming I think… “Oh wow this is so much fun, what an adventure, will this make a book?”

Sadly, not one has ever panned out for me in book form. When I wake up a lot of the dream fades and the pieces don’t seem to fit together. And when I start to think about the “plot” I suddenly see with my cool morning logic that it was all just a bunch of crazy nonsense.

I’ve heard stories about people eating certain foods or doing certain exercises to enhance dreaming just so they might unleash some subconscious idea. Luckily I’m an active dreamer so that’s never been necessary for me. But obviously some consider dreaming a tool for writers. Like the idea for Harry Potter is in there somewhere and if they just let themselves go in sleep and it will all come to them.

Last night I had a dream like that. It was a fantasy based children’s story. Just a broad stroke crazy concept that when I woke up I was like wow… that’s cool. Too bad I’m not a fantasy children’s writer!

So what about you all? Do you remember dreams? Do you use them to help your creativity? Or are they all just crazy chaos?

10 comments:

Karen Whiddon said...

Like you, I always think while dreaming or first thing when I awake that my dream was brilliant. I keep a pad of paper and a pen by the bed and I've been known to wake up briefly in the middle of the night and jot something down from a dream.

Unfortunately, in the morning when I read the notes back, they don't make sense. Gibberish nonsense. What my mind finds amazing while asleep turns out to be dreck. Sigh.

Eileen said...

Sometimes I wake up and have worked out a problem I've been thinking about. Or have a line of dialogue. I keep notecards by the bed to write them down, just in case. Although one time, I moved my bed and discovered piles of notecards that had slipped between the bedside table and the wall that I'd never done anything with. Some of them I remembered, some of them seemed like gibberish.

The vast majority of the dreams I remember seem to be stress dreams. :-(

Molly O'Keefe said...

this is hilarious - I made this really boozy punch for my book group last night (we read The Help - very great book) anyway - I had this dream that my family was vacationing on this beach and so were the Jolie-Pitts, something happened between our kids and I had to go up to Mr. Pitt and explain it and we got to talking and there was all this chemistry and he asked me to go to his boat...you know what that means? Anyway I didn't go, because my dreams aren't satisfying...but I did run into Angelina later in the dream, and we had all this chemistry and she asked me to go to her boat!!!

My dreams are always really vivid and usually scary. I wake up most nights thinking the walls are falling in on us or someone is coming through the window - it's very dramatic and annoying to those in the room with me. But then, yes, because the dreams are so vivid - I always think they'd be amazing books - but i'm with Karen, when I write it down - gibberish. Except that I was going to have a three way with Brad and Angelina.

Eileen said...

Brangelinally! You'd be a great addition to their coupledom!

Loved The Help, too. I have spent hours thinking about who in the book I would be. Would I be brave enough to be Miss Skeeter? Although did you see that Stockett is getting sued by someone that she based a character on?

Maureen McGowan said...

Like Molly, I only remember the stress ones where my house is falling down or something else is going horribly wrong.

But please let me in on your childrens' fantasy idea. :) I'll gladly take it off your hands. ;)

Stephanie Doyle said...

Okay are you ready Maureen... this is could be it. The BIG one!!!

There are two queens. One is the Queen of Everlasting. The other is the Queen of Never Ending.

One good. One evil. Their problem... "Time" has been stolen and they each want to greatest warrior in the land to fetch it back... that was me in the dream.

So there you go... dream brilliance. :)

Eileen said...

So much better than the dreams where I forget to pick up my children from the airport! Maybe it's all that yummy pork roll . . .

Maureen McGowan said...

Cool idea, Stephanie! You should write it! Middle grade is big right now. :)

Eileen, that's the sort of dreams I have, too...

And coincidentally... I just critiqued a YA ms for a friend in which the main character's father did that to her when she was younger... Flew her across the country, forgot she was coming in, and left her at the airport alone... I cried when I read the scene of the MC remembering...

Eileen said...

There's that one and the one where I forget to take the kids to school and one where I have to save my mother from a dog and for some reason my mother has a baby with her. I don't think I can even talk about the one where we're in the car that's going under water.

I want Steph's dreams. And her pork roll.

Anonymous said...

I remember nothing usually. It's so sad, because the tiny smatterings I do remember make them seem like they are cool and scary.

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