Taking advantage of ideas from my subconscious
August 2nd, 2008I woke up early this morning from a very vivid, somewhat jolting dream and was faced with a choice: to write it down or go back to sleep.
The easy route, and my most-travelled route, was to fall back asleep. I often have weird, bizarre, and/or vivid dreams that I sometimes sleepily recall for my husband in the morning before I fully wake up. Usually they’re disjointed or a nonsensical sequence of events with quirky or weird elements. Sometimes I remember bits of characters or situations and think “that’s great material for a story” and jot down some notes. Most of the time, the dreams fade away after my “real” day starts.
But last night, the dream from which I woke had fully developed characters, a fairly fluid story line and even a vivid location. The last thing I remember was a man being shot, and the female character (me, since I was seeing through her eyes, though it wasn’t me in the scene) vomiting at the sight of all the blood. I woke up gagging and even gasping a little for air… which in real life I think was just from an allergy-induced stuffy nose.
I lay there for a minute in that haze between dreamland and consciousness, replaying the story and feeling overwhelmed by the fullness of dream. I generally avoid horror and suspense genres in my waking hours because I’m prone to having nightmares afterward. The curse of an overactive imagination, perhaps? As I started to relax a little more, I felt the sharpness of the dream slipping away and I knew that if I went back to sleep, I would lose it.
So I got up and went to my office, where I grabbed the nearest pen and notepad and started to write. I didn’t want to waste even a minute by turning on the computer. And recording my dream notes has always been easier for me in silence, without the whir of a computer and the clicking of the keyboard. (Or the devilish temptation of the internet.)
My hand became the medium for converting my subconscious ideas into semi-lucid words on paper. At certain points, when there were holes in the dream, I filled them in with fresh ideas to form a more complete story. My handwriting is fluid on the page - I wrote three pages of plot and character notes without removing myself from the stream of ideas.
When I finished, it was once again like waking from a dream. I had awakened my mind enough to write everything down, and it was still churning, but I was still physically tired. At that point, I decided to go back to bed where I eventually fell back asleep.
Looking back on the notes that I wrote, I’m impressed with how much I was able to retain. It’s hard to get out of a cozy, warm bed before I really have to, but I think that I will push myself to do it more in the future when I have intense dreams. Why not take advantage of “free” ideas from my subconscious when I have the chance?
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