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Dreaming and writing
Dec. 7th, 2006 11:44 pmA while ago, I had a dream.
It's still vivid in my head, almost a year later, when I cast my eye over my dream diary and ( came across it. )
Question: Does everyone have dreams like this? Not only a coherent story, but one that doesn't end properly? If so, how can you stop yourself from spinning a universe and the story of its characters in your head? How can you stop yourself from writing? Do you wake up and think “wow, that was an interesting story” and then just forget about it? Aren’t you desperate to work out what happens next? Or do you just not realise that that’s how you find out what happens next – you write it yourself?
Or is it a carry-over of having started writing in the first place in fandom that I feel compelled to write original fanfiction of my own dreams? I don't remember feeling like this about my dreams before I started writing...
I was surprised, during NaNo, that at no point in the proceedings did I actually dream myself into the world I was writing. It’s odd, because usually when I’m in a writing frenzy, I dream my characters and my situations, every night a total vivid immersion in the world of my imagination. They’re not always coherent stories like the above - and they're certainly seldom actual scenes that exactly slot in - but even if they’re just incoherent snatches of dialogue and the swirling colours of a setting, they contribute to my world-building and plotting and overall inspiration.
I wonder if the reason why I still haven’t really decided whether to bother with the huge amounts of editing my NaNovel will require is that I’ve never dreamed even the smallest bits of it. It’s obviously not a story that really catches my attention and my imagination if it’s not hijacking my subconscious – and can it really be a story worth telling if it doesn’t even catch the imagination of the author?
Maybe it isn’t yet. Maybe if I work on it some more, I’ll start to dream myself into it and it will become that story. Maybe, now I’ve got the basis there, I’ll be able to work my way up from that.
Or maybe I should just chalk November up to a valuable learning experience – and it was definitely that – and concentrate on writing something that does fire my imagination...
It's still vivid in my head, almost a year later, when I cast my eye over my dream diary and ( came across it. )
Question: Does everyone have dreams like this? Not only a coherent story, but one that doesn't end properly? If so, how can you stop yourself from spinning a universe and the story of its characters in your head? How can you stop yourself from writing? Do you wake up and think “wow, that was an interesting story” and then just forget about it? Aren’t you desperate to work out what happens next? Or do you just not realise that that’s how you find out what happens next – you write it yourself?
Or is it a carry-over of having started writing in the first place in fandom that I feel compelled to write original fanfiction of my own dreams? I don't remember feeling like this about my dreams before I started writing...
I was surprised, during NaNo, that at no point in the proceedings did I actually dream myself into the world I was writing. It’s odd, because usually when I’m in a writing frenzy, I dream my characters and my situations, every night a total vivid immersion in the world of my imagination. They’re not always coherent stories like the above - and they're certainly seldom actual scenes that exactly slot in - but even if they’re just incoherent snatches of dialogue and the swirling colours of a setting, they contribute to my world-building and plotting and overall inspiration.
I wonder if the reason why I still haven’t really decided whether to bother with the huge amounts of editing my NaNovel will require is that I’ve never dreamed even the smallest bits of it. It’s obviously not a story that really catches my attention and my imagination if it’s not hijacking my subconscious – and can it really be a story worth telling if it doesn’t even catch the imagination of the author?
Maybe it isn’t yet. Maybe if I work on it some more, I’ll start to dream myself into it and it will become that story. Maybe, now I’ve got the basis there, I’ll be able to work my way up from that.
Or maybe I should just chalk November up to a valuable learning experience – and it was definitely that – and concentrate on writing something that does fire my imagination...
