Creativity in Sleep

A

Formatting and Page Styles

Merlin and Guinevere have been cast...

Status
Not open for further replies.

Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK
I like to think that I'm quite a capable director of my dreams. I alter the angle from which I view the action, zooming in for close-ups and panning across the scene. I've become adept at recognising when a dream is straying into nightmare territory, waking myself up and consciously thinking of something else as I re-enter sleep.

In the summer of 2013, I began to dream of imaginary scenarios that were plainly meant to be sections of a story or poetry. I'd been through a long and debilitating period of depression, during which I didn't do very much at all, although my waking hours had become enlivened by titles for stories, phrases and characters' names popping into my consciousness. That this creativity intruded into my sleep gave me hope, and I was compelled to record some of the ideas. These rapidly expanded into the plots for short stories and novellas. I also began to write poetry, with some verses arriving unbidden while I slept. I can honestly say that writing has been my salvation.

It wasn't all joy and light however. In researching the events that went into the back story of my serial killer in my first novel The Perfect Murderer, I read lots on the atrocities committed in Serbia in the 1990s. My villain's attitudes towards relationships and the taking of lives was formed then, for he was a boy soldier when he first killed. The war crimes that happened then, reawoke my memories of what the Nazis had done. I'd learnt about the Holocaust as a young child, my first realisation of man's inhumanity to man.

My serial killer is called The Watcher, a nickname that was awarded to him by his fellow soldiers for his patience and observation skills as a sniper. He's transferred his stalking and camouflage expertise to the fields of Cornwall, and is tracking down and killing victims as part of a bizarre role-play game. I guess that we're all a bit paranoid about being watched these days, as we're all under surveillance of some sort or other. I became even more nervous as The Watcher started to watch me, his creator, as I slept.

I was vaguely aware of his shadowy presence while I dreamed about sections of the novel, my work-in-progress, but on three occasions he intruded into dreams that were nothing to do with his story. Possibly because I never gave an accurate description of him while writing, he appeared as a silvery wraith form - but he was of menace and about to attack me! I'm a peace-loving man, but can be combative if confronted - so I attacked him back!

This would have been fine, had my belligerence been confined to the dream, but I acted physically. The first time I rolled out of bed, strangling a cushion that I'd been cuddling. Round two, a couple of weeks later, could have damaged my precious laptop, for I head-butted the coffee table that it rests on - I woke as it slid to the floor, just catching it. The worst incident of nocturnal fighting, prompted by my creative mind, involved me kicking The Watcher - or rather the wall next to my bed.

I was rather pleased with my aggression as I drifted back to sleep, though I thought that my big toe would be sore in the morning, as I'd given my assailant a full-blooded punt in the privates. When I went to get up in the morning, I couldn't put any weight on that foot and the toe was double the size that it should be. Initially I thought that I'd damaged some tendons or ligaments, but realised after a few days that I'd probably broken a bone. There was a half-inch deep divot in the wall plaster, so this was quite likely. There's not a lot to be done with such a break, so I rested up for a couple of weeks while limping around pathetically.

Thankfully, the nightmares never came back, though since I've recently returned to creative writing after seven months of submitting to agents and publishers, I have had pleasant moments of inspiration while sleeping.

I suppose that at the very least, I could use my night-time fighting as part of the blurb for The Perfect Murderer - 'Writing this book scared the author so much that he broke his big toe!'

Have any of you found inspiration in sleep? Various famous authors have been inspired by what they saw in their dreams, including Stephenie Meyer with Twilight, Stephen King with Misery, Robert Louis Stevenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Richard Bach and his Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

King in particular uses dreams as inspiration. He's been quoted as saying, “I’ve always used dreams the way you'd use mirrors to look at something you couldn't see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back.” He credits his dreams with giving him the concepts for several of his novels and for helping him to solve troublesome moments in the writing of his novel IT as well. (Source: Writers Dreaming: 26 Writers Talk About Their Dreams and the Creative Process , Naomi Epel, 1994)
 
That's really interesting, Paul, if a bit alarming, what with that toe and strangling the pillow. Yikes :)

Psychic insights sometimes come in dreams. I began to study tarot and runes and other forms of divination after a dream in which I saw the funeral wake of a friend of my mother's. I hadn't seen her for many years. She was only young; five children still at home, all school age.

I 'saw' the guests arriving at her front door and woke so haunted, I told my husband about it. Two weeks later, visiting my parent's, I asked casually whether they had heard lately from this friend. My mother went hard-faced, and said 'yes, why do you ask?' So I told her and she said she'd had unsettling news. This friend had lately had a worrying diagnosis after going for an eyesight check, following a minor 'prang' in her car. My mother asked, what did I see happening here? I told my mother straight, I could well be wrong and hoped I was, but I sadly feared that this friend had perhaps two years left, something like that. It was an inoperable tumour as it turned out, already Stage 4, and this friend, a totally wonderful person; so brave and energetic and clever; one of life's warriors and a defender of underdogs anywhere, died in her own bed 2o months later, so bloated with steroids so that her husband and children were beginning to find her almost unrecognizable.

A GP friend once said to me that modern medicine can makes unacceptable corpses of us, and very few will realize that, or weigh it as a consideration.

What has this to do with writing? I thought to myself, what USE is such a dream as that? Who does it help? The answer of course, is none, besides self-positioning, self-preparation. However, given a deck one Christmas I seized on them as a way of trying to understand and maybe train for helpful use whatever the mind had done here, however it had been able to produce such a dream.

Later, it seemed to me that divinatory insights and writing insights come from this same source; the well of wyrd within. We all access that in dreams, if we remember them in the morning :)

On an everyday level, I'll notice my dreaming mind is doing filing work; filing things heard or read during the day. There are filing dreams, and metaphor dreams (these are often important) and problem-solving dreams, and then, yes, ideas dreams. Names, titles and sometimes solutions to fictional problems, sometimes present themselves that way.
 
Very interesting. I haven't had the opportunity to use my dreams as part of my writing, though I suspect that happens more often as you fully immerse yourself in your characters and stories. My first two books I haven't had as much connection to than I suspect I will with a few more books in the future, as they deal more heavily with the villain, and I tend to get a little more involved with the villains. I find them a little more fun to write and therefore, I get into their heads more so I can write them better.
 
Very interesting. I haven't had the opportunity to use my dreams as part of my writing, though I suspect that happens more often as you fully immerse yourself in your characters and stories. My first two books I haven't had as much connection to than I suspect I will with a few more books in the future, as they deal more heavily with the villain, and I tend to get a little more involved with the villains. I find them a little more fun to write and therefore, I get into their heads more so I can write them better.
Villains are always easier to write than the good guy. Actors love playing baddies, as it gives them something to chew on. Playing the hero all of the time can be a drag, and is one of the surest ways of getting type-cast. I think that it's crucial to at least hint at the history that motivates a villain to behave in the way that he does, otherwise they become flat and predictable.
An interesting mixture of the good and bad is James Bond, who while on the side of the establishment is also a complete psychopath!
In writing my novel The Perfect Murderer, I realised that I had a problem in having my lead detective suffering from depression, as it made him rather inert and colourless. The story is as much about how different mental conditions affect people, as it is a thriller, so I used his obsessive devotion to his investigations as a lens for the reader to share, so they could work out what was happening - perhaps before the detective did. This still left me with a bit of a gap in the balance between good and evil, so I gave my hero a comic foil in the form of a blundering joker of a detective. He was very bright, but hopelessly headstrong and became a victim of the serial killer, through not sharing what he knew about him with his colleagues. Goodies can be as flawed as the baddies are compelling.
 
And if you need to include the brief mention of a horrifying dream in the book, there's nothing like a real dream to fill the role. A couple times my wife woke in a fright and described nightmares to me which I later used, and a couple of my own.

Years ago, for months I had nightmares about zombies all night, every night. On one occasion woke up screaming, because I had been caught this time, and was being eaten alive. One night's dream included three full days and nights of uninterrupted real-time zombie horror. I woke up utterly convinced that it must be real, because I had gone through three days and nights without waking, so how could it be a dream? The mind can be a real bastard, sometimes...
 
And if you need to include the brief mention of a horrifying dream in the book, there's nothing like a real dream to fill the role. A couple times my wife woke in a fright and described nightmares to me which I later used, and a couple of my own.

Years ago, for months I had nightmares about zombies all night, every night. On one occasion woke up screaming, because I had been caught this time, and was being eaten alive. One night's dream included three full days and nights of uninterrupted real-time zombie horror. I woke up utterly convinced that it must be real, because I had gone through three days and nights without waking, so how could it be a dream? The mind can be a real bastard, sometimes...
Dang, that's intense. I used to have recurring nightmares as a kid, once every couple months. When I woke, they obviously made no sense (I mean, are lime green and yellow skeletons ever really going to chase me out of a Wal-Mart? Or going to be tickled so much my back literally breaks? Good grief I hope not.), but those were some of the most terrifying dreams I've ever had because, while I was in them, they were SO REAL. I woke up crying and in real pain several times. Hmm, maybe they'll make it into a book in the future.
 
Or the dream where your teeth crumble from grinding them, and you're trying to hold them in place with your tongue? Yuck-city.
 
The first time I watched Resident Evil, I had a nightmare. Being chased by zombies, my feet sluggishly slow and unresponsive. I thought no more of it when I woke, other than ' I watch too many movies'. This was around fifteen years ago, give or take, and I still have zombie dreams roughly once every two or three months. They vary in intensity and vividness, some are black and white, most are in colour. Some actually have a good story to them; like in one, i was on a train heading north to Scotland, where a boat was waiting to take myself and the other passengers out to sea. The train became over-run by Nazi-zombies and I got bitten, trying to save someone else.
Some dreams are recurring; if I know where it's heading, I can say 'no, not tonight' and I either wake up or the dream changes.
The best zombie dream I had in terms of content and realism I shall describe now. It's in full colour, set in my hometown. My husband and I are running from a horde, hiding wherever we can, but they still find us. After darting here and there, we're stuck, back to back, surrounded on all sides by ravenous zombies. He has a katana from Kill Bill, I have the meat cleaver from our kitchen. And we hack and slash our way out. Blood's flying everywhere, the moves we're pulling off are epic. We end up facing each other, blood spattered and corpses litter the street. Everything played out like a top budget Romero movie. It was awesome.
I've also used some of my tamer dreams as inspiration for a story. My current wop is one; not bad, I churned three books out of a two minute memory.
 
The first time I watched Resident Evil, I had a nightmare. Being chased by zombies, my feet sluggishly slow and unresponsive. I thought no more of it when I woke, other than ' I watch too many movies'. This was around fifteen years ago, give or take, and I still have zombie dreams roughly once every two or three months. They vary in intensity and vividness, some are black and white, most are in colour. Some actually have a good story to them; like in one, i was on a train heading north to Scotland, where a boat was waiting to take myself and the other passengers out to sea. The train became over-run by Nazi-zombies and I got bitten, trying to save someone else.
Some dreams are recurring; if I know where it's heading, I can say 'no, not tonight' and I either wake up or the dream changes.
The best zombie dream I had in terms of content and realism I shall describe now. It's in full colour, set in my hometown. My husband and I are running from a horde, hiding wherever we can, but they still find us. After darting here and there, we're stuck, back to back, surrounded on all sides by ravenous zombies. He has a katana from Kill Bill, I have the meat cleaver from our kitchen. And we hack and slash our way out. Blood's flying everywhere, the moves we're pulling off are epic. We end up facing each other, blood spattered and corpses litter the street. Everything played out like a top budget Romero movie. It was awesome.
I've also used some of my tamer dreams as inspiration for a story. My current wop is one; not bad, I churned three books out of a two minute memory.
That. Was. AWESOME!

Also, Nazi Zombies was so much fun, on Call of Duty: World at War. Months of entertainment for one of my roommates and I, in college.
 
Weirder still is sleep-walking. There have been cases of people doing things that they would never have done in their waking hours. One chap in America drove his car to his office in the middle of the night, torched the building with a gallon of petrol that he'd bought in a can at a petrol station on the way, then drove home. He turned up to work in the morning, shocked to find his employer had been burnt down. He was quickly arrested, as he appeared on CCTV surveillance tapes. But he had no memory of his actions, and also no grievances with his employer. Fortunately for him, he'd been receiving treatment for various sleep disorders - so had a defence that he wasn't culpable. He wasn't charged with anything, though I somehow doubt that he got a favourable employee assessment report at his next work review!
People have murdered their partners while asleep, and there was a case here a few months ago of a young man who threw himself out of a window falling to his death, following months of nightmares about his flat being on fire. I walked in my sleep as a three year old, which might have been caused by the upset to my self-esteem when my twin sisters were born - talk about being instantly outnumbered! Apparently I used to go downstairs, switching lights on and filling saucepans with water. To stop my wandering, my father used to place a sheet of hardboard across the top of the stairs. When they heard the bonk-bonk-bonk of me walking into the barrier, one of my parents would come out, turn me round by the top of my head and walk me back to bed.
I haven't done it for decades, and the two times that I last did was in the seventies and eighties, when I was going through great emotional disturbance from relationships ending. One occasion could have led to me having the night of my life, or ending up in jail. I lived with my girlfriend in a flat on the fourth floor of an Edwardian building that was right in the heart of a busy area of Portsmouth called Southsea. There were a dozen clubs and pubs within a stone's throw, as well as a busy taxi-rank right opposite our front door. Things didn't quieten down until 2 in the morning.
We'd been out for a drink that evening, so my lover wasn't that surprised when I got up to visit the bathroom. I was gone a long while, then she heard a strange rattling at our flat's door. This had a couple of safety bolts, as well as a security chain, and it's just as well as it did or I'd have been off into the wild dark yonder. She asked me what I was up to, quickly realising that I was sleepwalking. Apparently I was stark naked, and also in a state of some arousal. She led me back to bed, though she refused to tell me what part of my anatomy she grabbed!
I didn't remember a thing about it in the morning. I wonder who I was off to visit...
 
The first time I watched Resident Evil, I had a nightmare. Being chased by zombies, my feet sluggishly slow and unresponsive. I thought no more of it when I woke, other than ' I watch too many movies'. This was around fifteen years ago, give or take, and I still have zombie dreams roughly once every two or three months. They vary in intensity and vividness, some are black and white, most are in colour. Some actually have a good story to them; like in one, i was on a train heading north to Scotland, where a boat was waiting to take myself and the other passengers out to sea. The train became over-run by Nazi-zombies and I got bitten, trying to save someone else.
Some dreams are recurring; if I know where it's heading, I can say 'no, not tonight' and I either wake up or the dream changes.
The best zombie dream I had in terms of content and realism I shall describe now. It's in full colour, set in my hometown. My husband and I are running from a horde, hiding wherever we can, but they still find us. After darting here and there, we're stuck, back to back, surrounded on all sides by ravenous zombies. He has a katana from Kill Bill, I have the meat cleaver from our kitchen. And we hack and slash our way out. Blood's flying everywhere, the moves we're pulling off are epic. We end up facing each other, blood spattered and corpses litter the street. Everything played out like a top budget Romero movie. It was awesome.
I've also used some of my tamer dreams as inspiration for a story. My current wop is one; not bad, I churned three books out of a two minute memory.

The only nightmares I've ever had from a movie was when I watched The Mask for the first (and last) time. I woke up screaming that night because the mask itself (no body attached) was chasing me.
 
People have murdered their partners while asleep, and there was a case here a few months ago of a young man who threw himself out of a window falling to his death, following months of nightmares about his flat being on fire. I walked in my sleep as a three year old, which might have been caused by the upset to my self-esteem when my twin sisters were born - talk about being instantly outnumbered! Apparently I used to go downstairs, switching lights on and filling saucepans with water. To stop my wandering, my father used to place a sheet of hardboard across the top of the stairs. When they heard the bonk-bonk-bonk of me walking into the barrier, one of my parents would come out, turn me round by the top of my head and walk me back to bed.

My husband's grandfather used to cook full meals in his sleep. His grandmother would wake up in the morning to a fully cooked breakfast. Sounded cool at first until I realized that meant he was playing with gas and fire while he was asleep!
 
My husband's grandfather used to cook full meals in his sleep. His grandmother would wake up in the morning to a fully cooked breakfast. Sounded cool at first until I realized that meant he was playing with gas and fire while he was asleep!
I followed a similar journey on that one — don't question it; you get a home-cooked breakfast out of it. Oh, wait, fire...
 
Having been a computer programmer for many years, I used to solve code issues in my sleep. Not at the computer, just in my head. I'd apply them the next day at work. In writing, I have done the same thing. Solving that "Where do I go from here?" question we sometimes get. Thinking about it, I have started a story-line from dreams more than once. Some panned out, others didn't. Nice to know that I'm still "working" even when I'm asleep. o_O
 
Gracious. Didn't something like that happen with Mendeleev, @MontanaMan65, filling a gap in the Periodic Table?
I don't know. I never did anything quite that important. When you work on software, "exciting" is the last descriptive that comes to mind. Maybe that's why most programmers are crazy... o_O
Similar to the saying, "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it sure helps!"
 
I dreamt of a character name the other day. Trying to work out how to make Suze more Indo-pak..and it came to me in a dream. Have to still check if it's correct though :rolleyes:
 
Gracious. Didn't something like that happen with Mendeleev, @MontanaMan65, filling a gap in the Periodic Table?
If I remember correctly, it wasn't Mendeleev and the periodic table, but Kekule and the structure of benzene. After obsessing about it for months, Kekule had a dream in which he saw the supposedly linear molecule turn on itself and start eating its own tail (ouroboros!) -- and thus he was inspired to check the feasibility of a ring structure for benzene.

I've always been very impressed by reports of people who can direct their own dreams; I can't imagine ever being able to do that. But there's no doubt that a good night's sleep can provide answers to a problem that seemed insoluble the night before.
 
Odd you should mention this. Last month I took a concept from a dream as a key factor in a book I'm working on. It's worked out well. I often wake up from a dream and think "I must use that - it was really funny / exciting / clever," but by the time I've got it down, I realise it was just mindjunk.
Best is when I wake up laughing out loud at a dream-joke that wouldn't even make a drunkard chuckle. I'm easily pleased. In my sleep,
 
Acting out things in dreams can be dangerous and embarrassing. My long-time partner was an infant teacher, and her school decided to experiment with trying out different team sports while reorganising the curriculum. One of them was soccer, which she knew little about and wasn't that keen on. To teach it to her pupils, she needed to learn how - so attended a few training sessions. This had painful consequences for me, as she swung her leg in a mighty kick while asleep taking a penalty shot and booting me in the process.
I was quite glad that I lived alone, when I woke up one morning in a comical pose. I've had a few surrealistic dreams over the years, in which I'm riding a motorcycle down an excitingly twisty lane - except that when I look down the bike isn't there, and I'm riding on a cushion of air. This was happening again during some lucid dreaming that I was doing just before getting up. Some noise outside disturbed me, and I opened my eyes to find that I was laying on my back with my legs raised, bent at the knees and supporting the duvet. My arms were extended above me, holding onto the handlebar grips of my invisible Harley. Even worse, my lips were pursed, and I was making brrrm-brrrm sound-effects!
 
If I remember correctly, it wasn't Mendeleev and the periodic table, but Kekule and the structure of benzene. After obsessing about it for months, Kekule had a dream in which he saw the supposedly linear molecule turn on itself and start eating its own tail (ouroboros!) -- and thus he was inspired to check the feasibility of a ring structure for benzene.

I've always been very impressed by reports of people who can direct their own dreams; I can't imagine ever being able to do that. But there's no doubt that a good night's sleep can provide answers to a problem that seemed insoluble the night before.


"I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."

—Mendeleev, as quoted by Inostrantzev

A good story, anyway. About directing dreams, Marc, I began to wonder about that, after the event I mentioned, and decided to try. I asked for a medical diagnosis dream. Long story, but I'd had varying diagnoses from consultants the previous 12 years, none of which was more than a poor 'fit.' They were describing, not diagnosing, and ignoring whatever symptoms didn't fit. Accordingly, I was wary of treatments offered, seeing that basically, the consultants didn't know what they were dealing with, but were throwing mud at the wall, hoping it would help. And sometimes these treatments help, at least a little, for a while. But what was the STORY, here? I was no wiser 12 years on, so for the purposes of this dream experiment, every night, lying in bed, I said to myself, speaking aloud, tell me the story? What's made me ill?

I did this every night for 3 weeks, last thing before going to sleep, rather like last minute cramming for an exam. Then, one Sunday afternoon, out in the car, I remembered a dream of the previous night. It had taken the form of a telephone call, telling me I'd got something they used to call Reiter's Syndrome, triggered by drinking contaminated water early in the 80's. I went to my encyclopaedia and saw the list of rogue bacteria implicated in this so-called Reiter's Syndrome and booked to see my GP. Making no mention of dreams, obviously, horses are easily spooked, I asked for a total 'sweep'. This had not previously been done, and it's the way to go in future, and they came back with an odd reading for yersinia enterocolitica. This is a common bacterium, usually does very little harm, we all harbour it, but in people with a particular antigen, HLA B27 chronic problems may develop after an acute exposure, and I had fallen into a wasps's nest. Wasp stings will frequently deliver an added burden of yersinia enterocolitica. Wasps eat carrion then drink in puddles. I paid £40 for copies of my NHS notes and found I had that antigen; no doctor had made reference to it.

I'd waited three weeks for the dream message to be 'delivered' to my conscious mind. The dream did not, hey presto, solve the problem, but it gave me a steer, which helped me later, in decision making.
 
"I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."

—Mendeleev, as quoted by Inostrantzev

A good story, anyway. About directing dreams, Marc, I began to wonder about that, after the event I mentioned, and decided to try. I asked for a medical diagnosis dream. Long story, but I'd had varying diagnoses from consultants the previous 12 years, none of which was more than a poor 'fit.' They were describing, not diagnosing, and ignoring whatever symptoms didn't fit. Accordingly, I was wary of treatments offered, seeing that basically, the consultants didn't know what they were dealing with, but were throwing mud at the wall, hoping it would help. And sometimes these treatments help, at least a little, for a while. But what was the STORY, here? I was no wiser 12 years on, so for the purposes of this dream experiment, every night, lying in bed, I said to myself, speaking aloud, tell me the story? What's made me ill?

I did this every night for 3 weeks, last thing before going to sleep, rather like last minute cramming for an exam. Then, one Sunday afternoon, out in the car, I remembered a dream of the previous night. It had taken the form of a telephone call, telling me I'd got something they used to call Reiter's Syndrome, triggered by drinking contaminated water early in the 80's. I went to my encyclopaedia and saw the list of rogue bacteria implicated in this so-called Reiter's Syndrome and booked to see my GP. Making no mention of dreams, obviously, horses are easily spooked, I asked for a total 'sweep'. This had not previously been done, and it's the way to go in future, and they came back with an odd reading for yersinia enterocolitica. This is a common bacterium, usually does very little harm, we all harbour it, but in people with a particular antigen, HLA B27 chronic problems may develop after an acute exposure, and I had fallen into a wasps's nest. Wasp stings will frequently deliver an added burden of yersinia enterocolitica. Wasps eat carrion then drink in puddles. I paid £40 for copies of my NHS notes and found I had that antigen; no doctor had made reference to it.

I'd waited three weeks for the dream message to be 'delivered' to my conscious mind. The dream did not, hey presto, solve the problem, but it gave me a steer, which helped me later, in decision making.
Ah yes, sorry, I stand corrected, now that you add the detail, my feeble brain remembers the Mendeleev story too. Apologies.
You're right about the habits of wasps - I once found a cluster of them tucking into a dead mouse, like miniature hyaenas on a miniature wildebeeste.
Re your diagnosis, the trouble is that medical science is split into specialist 'silos' who don't always talk to each other very well. So presenting with a swollen knee can get you sent to a surgeon who fixes knees, and/or to a rheumatologist. But if the surgeon sees no physical cause for the swelling on X-ray or MRI, and if the rheumatologist sees no clear pattern in the bloods, then as you say they start throwing mud at the wall - which wouldn't be quite so bad if only they weren't throwing mud at different walls, and not talking to each other. I'm afraid the fact is, in my opinion, that medicine is lot less advanced than some people like to believe. But if deep contemplation provides you with a clue that surfaces in a dream, then why not explore it.
 
My brain usually lets me in on secrets while I sleep. Answers to problems and questions. I also kept having certain recurring dreams that confused me greatly, until I finally realized what they meant and acted accordingly in real life. Now I don't have those dreams any longer.

I dream stories and artworks often. I also dream vast, sweeping, musical compositions.

In fact, I have recurring dreams in which I'm a famous composer, and I can hear the music in my sleep. I call this the "alternate universe Kate." Unfortunately, I don't remember the notes when I wake up.

This is not really odd, as I used to play piano and guitar and composed a lot of music in my teens. I haven't had any time for music since a) I went to college, and b) I decided to focus almost exclusively on writing. I mean, for me, most of the hobbies (of which I had a lot) had to go once I got serious about writing.
 
I've always been very impressed by reports of people who can direct their own dreams; I can't imagine ever being able to do that. But there's no doubt that a good night's sleep can provide answers to a problem that seemed insoluble the night before.

This is called lucid dreaming. I do this on occasion. Not even on purpose--I'll just realize I'm dreaming, and so I make myself start flying, as that's the most fun in a dream.
 
I'm afraid the fact is, in my opinion, that medicine is lot less advanced than some people like to believe.
I've said for years that doctors aren't the gods they like to think they are. Most lack anything resembling common sense, but then "Common Sense" is not so common.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
A

Formatting and Page Styles

Merlin and Guinevere have been cast...

Back
Top