My husband knows better than to ask me how I slept the night before.
Inevitably, I tell him about yet another crazy dream I’ve had. Inevitably, he wears that same forced smile as I recount my adventures in a few long breaths.
Once I dreamt about lions in hotels. That’s totally normal, right?
I was hosting a writers conference (location unknown) and I was staying in the same hotel as the attendees. In this hotel, there were live lions in the closets—one per guest room.
Anyway, I was given strict instructions by the hotel staff that under no circumstances were any of the guests allowed to harm the lions because they were sacred. Yet I kept hearing screams throughout the hotel and realized that one of those piercing, frightened screams was my own.
I’m completely drug free, I swear. But do you see why sometimes I don’t like going to sleep? Nevertheless, there is a silver lining. If I can’t keep these dreams from coming, I can certainly use them in a story, which I absolutely have!
Famed psychic Edgar Cayce (aka The Sleeping Prophet) said, "Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions."
Dreams played a significant part in my book, Inn Lak’ech: A Journey to the Realm of Oneness. In fact, several of Elm Sunday’s dreams began as my own, which is why I recommend writers keep a dream journal because you never know when your subconscious mind might generate a blockbuster scene or character.
Welcome to Your Movie
As farfetched as it may sound, dreaming has become an important tool in many a creative writer's toolbox. A drug-addled Robert Louis Stevenson was having a perfectly terrifying nightmare when his wife woke him. "Why did you wake me?" he grumbled. "I was dreaming a fine bogey tale!" That dream developed into The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was written during a six-day cocaine binge.
During a flight to London, Stephen King dreamt about an insane woman who kidnapped and mutilated her favorite author, which inspired him to write Misery. Famous novels like Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Sophie’s Choice, and Twilight were also inspired by dreams.
Whenever I dream, it's like going inside a multiplex. I have one bizarre movie experience and then I'm awake for a few moments before I go inside a new and different theater. The process repeats until I wake up for the day.
As soon as my head hits my pillow, my soul is off on another amazing adventure. Sometimes those outings are pleasant and sometimes my dreams are confusing and end up in my books, like this passage from Inn Lak'ech:
In Elm’s dream, she stood in the center of a large office, watching hundreds of people push in like cattle. It was obvious there would soon be no room to breathe. Why hadn’t they booked a gym or auditorium of some kind?
She was in charge of the auditions, but she didn’t know what the audition was for. She reached for a phone and called a department. The person she spoke to had no idea what the audition was about, either.
And yet the people continued to pour in, carrying their headshots and bios. Children. Adults. Seniors. They all pleaded for her attention, but she didn’t know what to do with them. Should she give them numbers? Have them fill out forms? Who would go first? It was a madhouse and she had no idea what she was doing.
Is it Sleepwriting or Channeling?
One of my writing projects this month is a play about spirituality. From the beginning, I had a vague idea of what it was going to be about, but really vague.
Then something took over, something I didn’t seem to have control over.
Like my novels, I would find myself sitting at my computer and typing away in the wee hours of the morning, as if I was sleepwriting.
I could see and hear my characters conversing on some mystery stage and then new characters would appear and soon my poor fingers were cramped from the typing, trying to keep up with all the action!
Later when I was wide awake, I’d read what I had written and would be amazed. Where did this new scene and these words come from? And who are these people?
I call this sleepwriting, although some might say it is automatic writing, which is the act of writing unconsciously. If so, I'm in good company with famous authors like Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Are you a "write owl" hunting for new writing ideas? Dreams are playgrounds for writers, so open your mind, fluff up your cloud "pillows," and dream on!
Writing Exercise
Keep a dream journal and apply at least one of your dreams to write
about a character who dreams they are dreaming.
Do you want to expand your mind and creative writing abilities with Automatic Writing, Crystal Dreaming, Moon Writing, Oracle Journaling, and Rainbow Writing? Learn about my Writing from a Higher Plane course here!