Approaching Daytime with Nighttime Thoughts

Courtesy of BJ Jones Photography

You’re wrenched from sleep by the nightmare rampaging behind your eyelids, leaving you drenched with sweat and gasping. After all you’ve just run for your life, pursued by a raging lunatic with delusions of godhood.  Why wouldn’t you be looking around to see where she is?

Has this ever happened to you? Don’t feel alone. This past week I’ve been through this scenario at least four times, once with shouted sound effects: mine. I chalk it up to my muse preparing me for a day at the keyboard.

I would welcome the experience if I was engaged in actively writing horror stories. Unfortunately, I’m not. Horror isn’t usually my cup of tea.

Thankfully, these weren’t memories either. I admit to having known a few with major emotional and mental problems, but none who went quite that far. So what it is that I’m supposed to get from this race against nightmare pursuit?

I get a kick-start in my day, first thing in the morning. These types of events almost always occur just before I need to get up in the morning. I don’t recommend them as a visual alarm clock. It’s too hard on the heart.

I also get an imagination that’s wide awake and looking for a place to happen. Just because I don’t write horror doesn’t mean that I can’t use this snatch of dream as an action scene for one of my fantasy stories. They always have to have villains, and those with delusions of godhood make some of the best; especially when you give them normal day jobs and pleasant demeanors.

The latest one gave me the answer to a sticky situation with my main character, the second lead, and several bits related to or involving the villain that I didn’t realize I had until now. That’s quite a bit of work for such a short bit of dream, but I’m grateful for it.

So, if you’re looking to broaden how you approach your daytime writing, look to your nighttime thoughts. They may well hold the key to those influential scenes with hero, villain, backstory, etc. Who knows what kind of gem mine you might find when you go on an active search.

I’m sure you’ve heard all the tips.

·       Keep a small notebook or index cards on the table beside the bed with a reliable pen to write down those bits you remember of dream, or thoughts that flash through your mind while it’s in twilight sleep.

·       Give yourself a moment to orient once you wake, to allow your mind to wander across its nighttime landscape and resolve any issues left tangled before waking.

·       Surprise your body with a full-body stretch; extend your limbs as far as they will go, straightening all the fingers and toes until they feel like they’ll fly off the ends of hands and feet. Get the spine elongated and all the long tendons of the body.  You’ll be grateful afterwards. (BTW, this is an old yoga exercise and practice for waking up the body.)

·       Regardless of what you dream, remember that your mind showed you these scenes for a reason; there were problems needing resolution, aspirations wanting acknowledgement, fears needing attention, ideas needing a place to show themselves off. Pay attention to them. They do have meaning.

Most of all, give them a job in your daily writing. Use them in whatever way you can, and enjoy the fact that you have them. Some people never remember their dreams, not even a snatch of one and they feel deprived.

Now, on a different thought train, I encourage everyone to pop over to Claudsy’s Blog today to see what my guest blogger, Meena Rose, brought to the forefront. She’s had her own little experiment that can be used by anyone, and is especially helpful to those who write in any capacity. You can find it at: http://claudsy.wordpress.com/ 

I also guest blogged at Meena’s blog this morning. Find it at: http://meenarose.wordpress.com/

Enjoy your day, all. Until later,

Claudsy 

Mental Movies and the Things Dreams Are Made Of

Since returning from our trip, I’ve found myself in a wonderfully interesting place in my head. Once I actually got accustomed to sleeping for longer snatches of time, my find began filling in the space between my ears with a large movie screen. Each night I get to sit in the front row and partake of the movie of the night.

I’m never disappointed, though there have been mornings when I remember the movie selection from the night before and wonder at the creativity involved.  I’ve been on battlegrounds, along shorelines watching for ships to approach. I’ve gone on hunts on horseback amid a group of obviously experienced huntsmen. I’ve found treasure and lost loved ones. I’ve sat at table with my grandmother presiding and talked with my family, reminiscing and thoroughly enjoying myself.

It’s been a grand time of movie watching. Last night’s triple header was a real winner. A war fantasy about a Middle Eastern Princedom and the military coup that puts an insane teenager on the throne that makes things far worse than they were before began the night. Navy S.E.A.L.s and native rebels were in pitched battle while a young native woman was trying to secure her family and hold onto a method of communicating with the outside world. Secret rooms held whispered conversations among rebels. Revolting acts of brutality marred every turn of the rebels escape route. In the end, the good guys did win their freedom, but at a terrible cost.

The second feature was a light-hearted comedy starring BJ and two enamored middle-aged men who were both determined to help her with her photography. The piece got really interesting when I informed them of her ever-present phobia of heights while they readied a cherry-picker to get her high enough to take aerial photos of a particular landscape. The resulting activity had me in stitches as I watched their antics and BJ’s response to them. This, too, ended happily for all.

The last film was probably the best of the night. Jim Belushi starred in a comedy about marriage, boredom, and a wife’s determination that it turn out in her favor. I rolled through that one, mental popcorn in hand and anticipation in mind.

I woke laughing.

This is the kind of thing that’s been going on in my dream life since moving into this apartment.

I can look at those three mental flicks from last night and figure out the triggers for them. I read an article yesterday about trouble in Syria and the heavy negative response to the torture and killing of a 13 year old boy. That made for the first film of war. The scenario that followed the beginning of the dream seems a natural outcropping of that story.

The second film undoubtedly came from an incident that took place here last evening. Details aren’t important, but the trigger makes perfect sense for me.

That last dream film was probably an offshoot of the second as far as characters was concerned. My mind evidently needed the comic relief from yesterday’s frustrations. The almost slap-stick quality to it filled the bill nicely.

My question after all of this is “Do you watch full-blown mental movies in your sleep and do you know where they came from?” Another question for the writers out there is “Do you ever use these dream films for stories that you write and submit?”

On top of that question is one other about us as writers. Do we dream differently, more completely, than those who don’t write? We’re always looking for interesting bits of news to pin a story on. We scour reality, news stories, and even commercials looking for characters to sprinkle in those stories to make them unique and memorable.

How big a part do our dreams play in our creative life on paper once we’re awake?

Help me answer this question. Do you use your dreams or parts of them to write stories? Let me know by dropping an answer in a comment and leaving it behind.

Until later,

Claudsy

Controlling The Dream

I woke this morning from an awful dream. In it I was watching a passenger plane coming in for a crash landing. I yelled at my best buddy, who happened to be driving, that we needed to speed over there.

 He asked me, “What for?”

That stunned me. This gentle, caring man had effectively told me that a plane crash didn’t matter.

I told him, “ To help with assistance. There’s going to be dozens of injured and probably fire and who knows what else.”

“Clauds,” he said, “you’d just be a hindrance and most likely become a casualty, too. Your eyesight won’t allow you to do that kind of stuff, and you know it.”

I awoke from that nightmare feeling totally helpless and adrift. And angry. How dare he tell me something like that!

That’s when my more logical and less visceral self took over. My self-defeating self had just tried to high-jack my future plans in order to nullify my desires and intentions. I thought about how worried it must be about losing control of my life if it was willing to make such a grand and blatant play to stop me from going forward.

I must really be threatening it, don’t you think? Me, too.

That made me feel very good. The fact that the mind used one of those early supporters of my dream to be a writer to derail me was a big mistake. He has always called me his inspiration. If such an event ever happened, he would be right there with me fighting flame and fumes to get at those who needed help.

The hindbrain miscalculated big-time on that one. It also tipped its hand too plainly, especially by flaunting my tenuous vision in the dream. I have never allowed that to make much difference in my life.

All of this brings me to the issue of Who’s In Control.

I did several things yesterday to further my writing. I managed to get out a crit for one of my group members on an article for children that she’d submitted. I sent a short story I’d written a couple of months ago to a lit mag that likes the quirky and unusual pieces that touches on human interaction and response. I submitted a writer’s article to a writer’s mag. I did market research for other pieces that I have on hand waiting for a home.

Perhaps I’d threatened my fear with that blast of purposeful energy and intent. Just maybe I was in danger of actually dropping off that tentative writer’s fence onto the side of I AM A WRITER. I mean, it’s all well and good to say it, but to mean it a person must walk the walk. Yesterday I walked in those shoes. They fit well, too.

Julie Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” has taught me to recognize when fear wants to drive my life again. Once a person’s aware of the subtle devices used to affect a change of driver, the outcome doesn’t fall automatically on the side of FEAR.

Don’t get me wrong. I probably have as much fear as the next person, and I can be as overcautious an any hen with an egg. Nevertheless, my life was tempered in the fires of an autocratic family structure which brought out the obstinate in me. That’s my secret weapon now.

All I have to do is envision FEAR as a person and remember defiance. That’s my ticket to self-direction. I hate having people tell me what I can and cannot do. That’s all FEAR is doing. Really. As soon as I give it a human form it loses all its power.

I get to drive my own life where I will and for how long.

So, let me ask you, dear reader, who’s in control for your dream? And why? Feel free to share the answers, or not, as is your pleasure. The questions are there, though, and you’ll think about them whether you want to or not. That’s the lovely reality about that bit of punctuation. It’s a hook that always catches something/someone.

Until later,

Claudsy