The Art of Dreaming
By Ann Aguirre | May 11, 2011 |
How many of you have vivid dreams?
I do. I’ve wondered if there’s any correlation between those who have really detailed, realistic dreams, remember them, and use them to inform their writing on some level. I didn’t always remember my dreams, but then I started keeping a notebook beside my bed, and as soon as I wake up, sometimes in the middle of the night, I jot down every fragment I can remember.
This is more valuable than it sounds. The Dark Age Dawning series, which is apocalyptic paranormal romances I wrote with Carrie Lofty, came from a single dream. Kind of crazy, but it was an incredibly intense, adrenaline filled dream. I made some notes on it. I posted on a blog about the dream, and readers were like, Oh my God, I would so read that. I let the idea stew for a while, and due to deadlines and time constraints, I just didn’t have time to finish the books all by myself.
So eventually I banged out the first chapter and emailed it to my pal and fellow writer, Carrie Lofty. She was like, what am I supposed to do with this?. I replied, “Write the next chapter.” And that was how our partnership was formed. Now we’ve got a sale, amazing cover art, and three fantastic books in a trilogy that I think is really dark, different, and delicious. Rock on, Ellen Connor.
And this is why I recommend people pay attention to their dreams. For me, it’s like an idea garden. You can weed it later, but not if you don’t remember what you’ve been dreaming. And it has been my experience that the more you make detailed notes, the more you’ll be able to remember and write down. You never know when your subconscious will have an amazing suggestion that it can’t make when you’re awake.
What was your last vivid dream?
Photo courtesy Flickr’s ::: M @ X :::
Ann Aguirre is a bestselling, multi-published author with a degree in English Literature. She is a prolific writer, with nine releases planned for 2011 alone. She writes romantic science fiction and urban fantasy under her own name. As Ava Gray, she writes high-octane romances. She also writes “hot paranormal apocalyptic action” with fellow author Carrie Lofty under the pseudonymn Ellen Connor. Follow her on Twitter.
Best line of the day: “It’s like an idea garden.”
Thanks for a great post.
So, I know this is a post about the power/value of dreams, but now I’m curious what the collaboration process was like! Lol. I’ve read a few collabs that really… um, didn’t work. And some that were fabulous. And I’m wondering what your insight to the experience is.
I don’t recall my dreams very often, and more likely than not they are usually rubbish, but I have written from dreams before too, and when I get a decent bit of inspiration in a dream I must say it is really fantastic! Strange things come to you in dreams, and they can make for some great stories!
According to folklore, Thomas Edison used to take naps in an armchair, with a croquet ball in each hand. As he fell asleep, his hands would loosen, and the balls would drop onto tin pie plates, waking him up. He would then lunge forward and write down the first thoughts on his mind, taking advantage of the free-flowing wildmind we access in our dreams, and turning it into new ideas. Probably a lot of nonsense, too, but hey.
I don’t see why the same thing shouldn’t work for writing!
I’m a huge dreamer (both awake and asleep). I stopped keeping a notebook by my bed, though, because I could never read my writing. Instead, I keep my Blackberry on my bedside table and text myself notes in the middle of the night. Plus, it has the added bonus of lighting up just enough that I can see what I’m doing without waking up Mr. Brown.
What a timely post for me. Was just wondering about last night’s dream:
A couple of college friends (whom I haven’t seen in years) and I were leading a cultural/cooking tour through several small towns of Italy. None of us is a chef. Neither of them speaks any Italian, and mine isn’t good.
All our charges apparently suffered from some measure of ADD. We spent a lot of time herding them from one place to another. One especially scruffy guy had an infant strapped to his backpack with a jury rigged baby carrier.
The weirdest part was that my friends and I were young again in the dream, but had the body of experience from our present, pushing 40, lives.
Though I’m a good dreamer, it never occured to me to keep a note book beside the bed. Thank you the great suggestion.
I dream often and vividly every night. I’ve wondered about it’s link to my creative side because I don’t remember dreaming like this before I started writing fiction five years ago. At the same time, it can be tiring to dream that much!
My current WIP came from a dream. I’ve scribbled many a great idea in my notebook by the bed, including an entire poem that may be one of my best.
I have vivid dreams all the time. It’s definitely important to write them down because you never know what ideas could come to you!
I posted about this topic on my blog lately! In my case, I used to have very vivid dreams. Like crazy, make you cry/laugh/stay mad at your husband all day dreams. However, since I started writing my first novel they’ve really calmed down. I attribute it to letting my subconscious loose while I’m awake!
Could also be sheer exhaustion, but I prefer the former. :)
Thanks for the great post!
I can relate to this post. I also have frequent, vivid dreams. In fact, almost every story I’ve written has been based on or at least used some fact of a dream I’ve had. Very fertile field for ideas!
I have vivid dreams, but the problem is that they make no sense once I wake up, even if I remember every detail. So it’d be hard for me to use a dream as a starting point for a narrative that anyone would understand ;)
But a few years ago, I had this one dream that I just had to write down. I completely forgot about it, but thanks to this post I’m going to look it up again, because I meant to write a story about it at the time (and quickly got distracted by other projects)!
I think it’s amazing that your dream not only inspired your story, but that you were able to collaborate with another writer and take it so far. Congrats!
For years my best dreams were the ones I’d have in the brief moment between when my body (the physical part) was already asleep, but my mind wasn’t. For that brief instant I was free to soar, and go wherever my still conscious mind took me. It was often breathtaking. Unfortunately, though, I could never recall them when I woke the next day! :)
I have incredible dreams. They are like novels. I really should have a notebook by the bed. But then, I would loose the next chapter coming up while I’m jotting down stuff I just dreamed.
I dream when I am not writing, but when I am writing, the dreams dry up. It’s as if that spring needs to be tapped and drained during the day and if it isn’t, it wells over into the night.
For inspiration, my best time is the twilight between waking and sleep, just as I’m falling into the abyss. All kinds of ideas surface then, and I tend to play out the next scene like a little movie, which helps me remember it for the morning.
Last night I had a dream that I was escaping drug lords. My drug-friends and I dressed up as other people and snuck out of our drug-house to a waiting mystery black car. The police were also disguised as other people, but we still knew they were police. It was very tense. I’ve been watching a lot of Weeds, I’m not a drug dealer.
I must say, I’ve heard the advice so many times…put a notebook by your bed. And I say, “Yeah I know, I totally should do that.” But I don’t. And I think I actually will. Doing it right NOW……….
:)
Oh, I love your phrase “idea garden”!
Yes, I do have vivid dreams, not as many as I used to, and wonder if it’s for the reason Stephanie mentioned.
My last novel grew out of an especially vivid dream, and I had a vivid dystopian dream last month, but I don’t write dystopian. Not novels, at least. Maybe I’ll use it in a short story.
Anyway, I love dreaming. Thanks for the post.
I’ve had incredibly vivid dreams since taking Celexa, LOL! And while their actual story-line is never really good fodder for fiction, the emotional experience definitely is. Those chilling, disturbing, bittersweet anxious and often frustrating feelings I often wake from a dream with feed right into characters and their lives.
Yes, I do have vivid, weird dreams that would make an interesting movie – or at least be the basis for a really intense hour with a therapist. But that’s not where I find sleep to be most helpful to my career.
I realized several years ago that if I go to sleep with tomorrow’s writing assignment in mind, I will often wake up with the first sentence in my head. Now this doesn’t work well if I’m getting up to an alarm. It’s most successful on those days when I beat the alarm and wake up slowly, naturally, coming out of the dreamy phase of sleep and into the alert portion of my day more gradually.
The idea for the story (or chapter, as the case may be) rolls around in my head. I can either see the scene (if it’s fiction) or I can organize the thought process that unfolds (if it’s a non-fiction assignment). Either way, I get up with a very clear idea of the opening sentence, the pacing of the story, and the wrap-up, or the hook that ends it.
With that idea firmly in my head, it doesn’t matter if I go right to work or head out for coffee with the usual gang first. I’ve got my work organized and ready to go in my head – and that puts me on the path to a successful day, almost every time.
Thanks for reminding us how important dreams are in the creative life. And thanks for the tip: keeping a notebook next to the bed sounds like a splendid idea!
Stephanie Meyer recounts on her blog how Twilight came to her from a dream – the whole thing! Quite remarkable. And I think lots of writers are like that, particularly the paranormal kind…For others, more rational types, it might be harder. Reading the comments, I noticed several said dreams they had looked like rubbish the next morning…And I’m afraid mine do, most of the time!
But now I’ll keep notes on them and see…You may be right, gens could be hidden in all that rubbish!
I am so envious of all of you “dreamers”. Supposedly we all dream, all the time, but I wake up remembering nothing! I wish I DID remember my dreams because after reading all these comments, maybe I wouldn’t be having such a hard time thinking of what to write for my fourth book if I could recall what went on in my mind in the middle of the night!
Thanks for all your comments and thoughts. The Blackberry is a great high-tech idea. I always forget to charge my electronics so if I tried that I would have a dead phone next to me. Heh.
[…] “I recommend [writers] pay attention to their dreams. For me, it’s like an idea garden. You can weed it later, but not if you don’t remember what you’ve been dreaming.” — Ann Aguirre […]
I too have vivid dreams. I also keep a notebook and pen by my bed so if I have a dream that stirs up emotions, I write that dream down with as much detail as possible. I then add that idea to my “idea binder” and stew about it until I believe I have a full story. My dreams also work to help me solve some problem I’ve had with a current story, like if I didn’t know where to go with a story, in my dream, I would have a solution. Dreams are remarkable for creativity! I don’t know what I would do without them.
I get so many of my story ideas this way! As a result, nothing is more frustrating than when you wake up, know you’ve dreamed something mind-blowing, and the details start to slip away even before you can reach your pen. It feels like such a loss.
If I’m having trouble figuring out a plot point or a character, I try to make that the last thing I think about before falling asleep. Even if I don’t remember the resulting dream, I often have much clearer ideas of what to do in the morning. Dreams aren’t just useful for getting new ideas, but for figuring out ones you already have.
Wonderful post. I was hit by a drunk driver last year and since then, I have had a lot of strange dreams and/or nightmares. They are so interesting though, I don’t know why I didn’t think to write them down and use them in my work before. Great tip!
I thought I was crazy for having too vivid of dreams! My husband gets up at 4 30 every morning for work and I’m in a semi-conscious stage at this time. But apparently, every morning I tell him about my dreams and he is just amazing at how detailed, albeit crazy, they are.
I love this post. I should definitely start keeping a notebook by my bed.