Saturday, March 29, 2008

Dreams and stories

I woke up at 4am this morning from the strangest dream I've had in a long time (in general, vivid strangeness haunts my dreams...always has).

In my dream, I was stuck with this group of people in a house that wasn't mine. And these people I was with really freaked me out. They tried to tell me how to do everything under the sun: chores, meals to cook, what I should and should not be wearing, how to speak, even how I should be raising my kids. I finally lost my temper and yelled at them to mind their own business, then I woke up.

I blinked a bit, confused as to where the heck this dream came from. It was almost like a Reality TV show, and I don't watch any Reality TV. I was just settling back to sleep when I bolted upright, wide awake, thinking "those people are perfect for a story I want to write!" So I got up, scribbled some notes, thought some more, scribbled some more, and so on. And I never did get back to sleep.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's gotten story ideas from a dream, which makes me wonder what goes on in other people's brains. And what the heck kind of wiring do our brains have that gives us these wacky dreams? It's probably something I'll never know, but it's fun to think about.

2 comments:

Miss Midwesterly said...

dreams are such amazing fodder. it's like, free-range thinking. logic has no part, and that can be a good thing! write on!

Tabitha said...

I never thought of it that way...a place where my inner editor can never reach me! MWAHAHAHAHA!! :)