First the background info - I am trying to write a novel. One of the things in the novel is a dragon egg, which can't be conceived in the usual way and must be created by magic somehow (haven't figured out how, I'm not real good at making up magic systems, think maybe I'm too literal and logical minded). Another thing in the novel is the idea of people being classified into distinct personality types. I went to the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History today and looked at sculptures and carvings of stone, wood, ivory, etc. I thought about acquiring a block of soapstone and carving it into something, perhaps a chain. I also looked at dinosaurs, portrayls of evolution, and specimens of extinct and endangered birds.
So, the dream itself. I came back exhausted from the museam and took a nap. I dreamed I was back at the museum, only they were teaching people how to carve things - wood and alabaster mainly. They also had special, almost glowing eggs made out of each material as museum exhibits. Each type of carving material corresponded with a culture - wood was from a more primitive, impulsive culture while alabaster was from a more complex, scholarly culture.
So I looked at the presentations and learned the carving techniques, and looked at the eggs, and understood them. But the problem was, I couldn't use the carving techniques to make an egg. It was one of those dreams where you're supposed to do something (make an egg) but no matter what you try it doesn't work. It felt like the carving techniques were in one part of my mind, and the understanding of the eggs was in a different part of my mind, and I couldn't make the two combine.
So, what does it mean to dream that although I have to create an egg, I cannot create an alabaster egg by sculpting alabaster, or a wood egg by sculpting wood? Does the egg correspond literally with the dragon egg in the novel, or does it represent the novel itself and the problems I am having trying to write it, or something else? If I can't make an alabaster egg by sculpting it out of alabaster, how _do_ I make one?
In my case, I would say the problem lies in getting my conscious mind to figure out what I subconsciously want and need to make. What I feel like is that I don't have a path to go where I want to go; maybe I just don't know where I want to go. There was a lot of emphasis no technique in the dream, maybe I am subconsiously deciding that the technique I am trying to use might be perfectly good for making something but will not result in the book I want to write.
It makes me suspicious that the eggs in the dream were glowing - normal carving does not create something that glows. In the dream, I know I want to make an egg, but I don't know exactly what it should be made out of, or what makes it glow with museum-quality. With a big project like a novel it's not enough to know that you want to make AN egg, you have to know that you want to make THE egg, YOUR egg.
Guess I should have put this thread there, oops. 
I did find a wriing exercise to play with (the program StoryBase) and hopefully insights gained from that will enable me to see where my plot outline feels restrictive or not alive and fix that. (If you want I'll show it to you after I'm done revising it, maybe next monday or tuesday.) Also someone suggested that my novel is a milieu novel, so I'll investigate and see if anyone has good advice about what a milieu novel is and how to write one which might help me write mine. 
