Dreaming Up Words

I am a vivid dreamer. Like waking up still stuck in a dream in a whirlwind of powerful emotions and having the harsh reality that it was, in fact, only a dream. It happens more times than not and it’s nothing short of a completely jarring event. Especially when I’m pulled from such a wondrous experience by two little ducks (aka my children) who have no idea what volume control is. What a way to start the day, right?

There’s a reason for this other life, though. Books. Because of all the hats I wear (remember last month’s post?), most of my reading is done at night, just before bed. Right now I’m on the last book of The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare, which may explain why automatons are roaming my dreamscape or why I’m having to choose between two guys I love. Intense reading makes for more intense dreams makes for more intense waking. It’s a cycle, but I wouldn't dare break it, even with the startled and sometimes extremely lost feeling I wake with.

Because I *try* to see the bright side to things like this and I’m a very emotional person, the first thing I do...well, wait, second, because the first is to satisfy those little ducks long enough so there can be a second...is sit down at my computer and type up a blurb about the dream. Any details I can remember at all- colors, dialog, physical descriptions, intense feelings, the basic gist of what took place, etc. And most of the time it just spills out in a half decipherable blob of word vomit. But it’s out of my head and it usually helps soothe that empty feeling that bridges my two worlds. Usually.

When those mixed emotions still linger and the word vomit keeps replaying in my mind, it starts to expand until a storyline unfolds. It’s really a quite beautiful thing, if you ask me. What better way for a story to develop than while I’m asleep and my mind is relaxed enough to wonder and muster up its own fantastic creation? Really, this is how my first manuscript came to be. It started as a dream-inspired, word vomit blob. And then there was another blob and another and another until the story started working itself out between them. My current WiP? Another intense dream spurred the idea. The same thing with the countless other documents I have saved on my computer, just waiting to be expanded on.

This is how I find my inspiration. I read and then I dream. And it’s that desire to continue being lost in those dreams that drives me to write as a way of recapturing and extending the emotions I feel while reading and sleeping. In a way, I almost feel indebted to the fabulous authors that keep me up reading late at night and in turn keep me sleeping later than I should because I can’t get the emotional bubbles to pop long after powering down my Kindle. One of these days, I hope to be the inspiration behind someone else’s vivid dreaming. But until then, I’ll be more than content to keep dreaming up words on my own.

Are you a vivid dreamer?