At some point last night I had a dream in which I was moving through something—a series of roads or alleys in a city. In the hours before sleep I had watched Scary Movie with my daughter, an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the opening sequence of Ready Player One. My brain was tuned to something like race and chase. In the dream I said to myself, or was told by one of my fellow travelers (who, of course, was still a part of me) that I should know where to go since I had made the maze or laid out the roads or alleys. It was, after all, my dream.
I had gone to sleep reminding myself about an idea I had about a scene I had worked on in the previous week. The scene felt unduly exposition-heavy, which pulled the moment in the novel out of the “vivid and continuous dream” necessary for fiction. I decided to leap over the explanation by allowing the narrator to puncture the narrative—which she has been doing all along. The novel takes place in her head—her memories, thoughts, and concerns as the story progresses. So, when asked how she reached a conclusion, instead of telling how she did it, she dissects the art of conclusion.
I guess I have a few points here. First, whatever you feed yourself image, word, or idea-wise is going to reverberate consciously and unconsciously in your mind. This can be a distraction or a benefit. You don’t always (ever?) know which it will be. Your subconscious will occasionally guide your conscious choices, so be aware of that as well. Call it intuition, call it luck, but know that there is a call.
Second, the same way you sleep every day, diving back into the dream world, replenishing the image and idea bank and recharging your batteries, you should write every day. The sleeping dreams feed the waking dreams and the waking dreams feed the sleeping ones. The cycle and connection are unavoidable, and if you avoid either, you do so at creative peril. Trust the conversation between the waking and sleeping dream; it can keep you from getting stuck or blocked.
And third, even when you tap into that great river of the subconscious, you get to shape what flows out onto the page. While you may feel out of control or at the mercy of forces larger than yourself in any particular moment, you are the author of work. Yes, there are forces beyond your control: the weather for instance. Navigate around bad weather. Shouting at the storm is a particularly ineffective madness.
And storms will come—from outside and from within. You cannot control that. All you can do is decide how you will respond—what you put on the page and that you continue putting something on the page.
Is this true for how you lead your life as well? Perhaps. I know too many writers for whom the page was the only place they found some control that I am reluctant to suggest that we are the authors of our lives. We may be, but it is a far trickier proposition. To extend the storm metaphor: Expect bouts of mal de mer, lightning strikes of varying seriousness, and the occasional drowning. Hope for recovery, repair, and resuscitation, but prepare to proceed retching over the side with torn sails and down a hand or two. Or howl at the wind. Or both. You decide.
And, if you write, while all that is happening, get back to work. Put the inevitable horror into your writing—either spelled out in gruesome detail or couched in metaphor (or both!). We are ready to dream alongside you.
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