You ever wake up from an amazing dream and it changes you as a person?
You think, ‘I’ll never forget this…’ then, get up and carry on with life.

As you have a moment you go back to that dream. But it just blinked out of your brain. Not even a slight crumb left over. But you know it was so so good!

Do you know how many more ideas I’d have if I just remembered? Or better yet, wrote down the fucking dream!? SO MANY!

We can’t trust ourselves to remember. I forget what I’m doing the second I go to do it most of the time.

PSA: Keep a dream journal.

PSA2: Actually write in the journal (or record it, whichever you like, bud).

Quite hypocritical of me to suggest since I have fallen out of practice – as proved by my last post. But let’s just add it as another goal! One I may or may not ask for punishments/rewards for!

Gotta be careful about overloading myself. That’s the fast track to just dropping everything and crawling into a cocoon to binge-watch trash TV to kill the remaining brain cells.

BUT let’s move on and look at some of the great things that did come from dreams.

The great and wise Google says that the sewing machine was invented after it came to Elias Howe in a dream. Specifically how the inner workings of the machine would work to stitch fabric together.

The theory of relativity came to Einstein in a dream (supposedly).

Analytical geometry (whatever that is).

FRANKENSTEIN! (What a dream!)

All wonderful things – even the geometry, I’m sure! From a shit writer’s standpoint, it’s certainly welcomed. Especially when I’m struggling with scene ideas or ideas in general.

Some of my own dreams will give me just the things I need to spruce up a WIP or even give me a scene that I wanna add in.

Here’s an excerpt from a dream I actually remembered to record:

… Something drew me to the backyard, so I headed there. It was dark but like that gray, lightning dark. There was a line of trees and figures were coming out from then. From the actual trees, not out behind. As they got closer I saw that their faces were just dark voids. No features or anything else…

I currently don’t have a place for this. But I know I want to put it somewhere. The dream felt so surreal! I definitely would want to try to bring that to life in either a short story or something like that.

There is one dream that sparked an idea. It was small, just a concept really. Luckily, there was an assignment to write a short story that would carry over two classes. The previous short story that I had written for another class just didn’t feel right. Didn’t go anywhere. Ended with a Dues Ex Machina. That’s pretty bad.

The initial dream turned from a small scene to a short story. But, I wasn’t satisfied with that. There was more to explore. More to tell.

I set to work on the outline, adding more characters, more scenes, etc. This would be great!

And it was, until distractions, life, laziness, other shinies.

3+ years later and there’s hardly anything to show for it. But there’s still time, still ambition, motivation, dreams.

That initial dream spark will not die. There’s too much there. Too much to say. More stories, ideas, and characters that need to escape from the black hole of my brain.

This shit writer will keep at it until they are heard. Or read. Or just out in the void, finally free from a worthless creator.