A New Dream, A New Idea

All. The. Time.

Usually on work days, though, meaning I can't write until after work except in my head - and somehow it usually doesn't happen, between shopping and making dinner and family and being worn out and all that... but I do my best to jot them down.

My suggestion is to do as you've been doing, then dip into the grab bag every now and again and see if they still speak to you with the same energy and urgency.

I've related this before, but nevertheless...

I've twice had very vivid serial dreams which I did not realise were dreams for some time. The first was some years ago before I was published. Over several months I dreamed I was reading a book written by a colleague at work. It was really good and I was vaguely resenting him (in the real world) for writing something so good first go when I'd been trying such a long time without success. When I got to the end of the book in the dream, I was so knocked out that it woke me up...and that's when I realised the whole thing had been a (series of) dreams. I felt embarrassed (but also relieved) about my vague resentment of the fellow and immediately confessed to him - which he found hilarious.

The second serial dream was responsible for my most successful book. I woke from a very powerful dream one morning and as I lay there still slightly awash in the shards of imagery, I realised that I have a dream suburbia, just slightly different from the real suburbia in which I grew up, against which many of my dreams happen. Thing is, the dream and real suburbias are so similar, that there are incidents in my life which I genuinely cannot remember whether were real or dream. The instant I rationalised that thought it immediately struck me as a fabulous basis for a story - which was published some years later as my crime thriller (Straight Jacket). No-one has ever guessed the ending (as far as I know) and even armed with this transcendent clue I still doubt whether anyone could guess.

...

Multiple pens and notebooks in the bedside table, always.

Scribble it down, revisit it in a week or two.

Jeff

Marissa D said:

Multiple pens and notebooks in the bedside table, always.

Click to expand...

WeaselFire said:

Scribble it down, revisit it in a week or two.

Jeff

Click to expand...

Little spiral notebooks!
Most employers are unlikely to object to you carrying around a little spiral notebook you can store in a shirt pocket. When inspiration strikes, scribble down your thoughts to preserve them.
https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/811440/Mead-Wirebound-Top-Opening-Memo-Book/

I can relate to this. I try and write down the dream right away in my half-awake state and then come back the next day and see what I can salvage from it. I've also got quite excited over an idea and tried to write it down in the dream and only realise later when I check my notes that nothings there, this has happened a couple of times now! Some of the things I write down would work as ideas, but most of them just make me laugh as they're so nonsensical. Stuff like "Vampire, goes to amusement park, talking fish, friend in outer-space" it's either a half-filled in shopping list or a cryptic message.

I only occasionally have a dream that makes me want to write it down. I usually type it into my phone since my handwriting in a half-awake stupor is ridiculously poor. I have one I'm eager to write after I'm finished with the trilogy I'm in the middle of writing. It's a decent idea compared to my other dream ideas.

The best dreams are when I get vivid scenes of whatever story I'm currently working on, leading to new ideas. I've had several of those sneak their way into my writings.

To be honest, I would go through them and choose a primary to work on, or perhaps even combine some ideas into one story. If you always bounce back and forth, you may never get anything done. Says this writer AKA me who never gets anything done. Try speed writing. That way you can work out a rough draft quickly for one idea while avoiding the inner critic and then move on to the next idea while the draft rests.

The problem with dreams is that the brain can generate whatever emotion it wants, at whatever intensity it wants, and overlay this onto a very mediocre narrative. Since the recollection of dream imagery triggers these emotions, it becomes very very very very difficult to objectively assess whether that idea/sketch could catalyse those emotions in some other brain.

A very good way to know if dream content is worth using, is if you find yourself obsessing/thinking about a dream for days, weeks or years to come. If that's happening, it means that you have been unable to establish closure on the themes involved, and that for a very brief moment—your brain might have exceeded its own intellectual capacity, in forming the idea. In other words... bona fide creativity

An example: Hergé had reoccurring nightmares about being trapped in an endless white expanse. They so troubled him, he wrote "Tintin in Tibet" as a kind of psychotherapeutic exercise, after which the nightmares promptly ceased. Why were they scary? What's so bad about endless white, anyway? The Matrix clearly didn't consider it all that bad? None of that matters. What matters was that his waking brain could not deal with the depth of the emotions involved, which is a very good indication your creative project will be well-served in trying to encapsulate it artistically.

I keep a detailed dream diary. If I find myself revisiting a dream (solely from memory) more than six months after I had it, I incorporate it into my work. Only then do I go back and look at the notes.