WRITING FROM DREAMS

“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.”
—Andre Gide

Dreams are a form of madness. The mind, unmoored from reason, freely generates hallucinations roiling with symbols and scenarios from the deepest part of the unconscious. Sometimes whole story lines develop. Sometimes an emotion or a fantastic landscape emerges.  Often, my dreams render insights into real life or fictional issues that I am struggling with in a story.

When I was pregnant I dreamt of giving birth to a strange purplish sea creature who spoke to me in riddles and of a child so tiny she vanished down the sink when I bathed her. Such images, illuminating my fears of motherhood, became the dreams of a pregnant character in a current novel.  A dream vision of exaltation and glory atop a cloud-swathed mountain expressed a character's epiphany in a short story. And even if not specific, the accumulation and analysis of dream images deepen my writer's storehouse.

 Some images are horrific, some beatific, but if scrutinized, they can reveal the coded message of extraordinary value.  I keep a notebook beside my bed to jot down even a ragged tail end of an elusive vision. It speaks to me in time, slithering unexpected into a story to deepen and enrich. WRITE ON!