July 27th, 2009
Writing can affect your dreamlife in the strangest ways. When I was writing about synaesthesia for Breathing in Colour, I had lucid dreams in which I experienced the mingled perceptions of synaesthesia, even though I don’t have the condition in my waking life. Now I’m writing about a man who suffers from moving nightmares in Dreamrunner, I’ve had incidents in which I wake up acting out a dream movement, like raising my arm in the air or half sitting up in my sleep (See my IASD 2009 paper on the On Writing page).
It’s astonishing and at the same time understandable to recognise the extent to which our creative writing can shape the content of our dreams. My short story The Kielius Fish, itself built around a mixture of dreamed and imagined imagery, prompted a whole string of dreams, lucid and non-lucid, about leaping fish. Once I dreamed of struggling to save a golden fish that was ‘drowning’ in the sand, and I wrote this into a poem. Dreams spark writing, which spark dreams, which spark more writing (the dreaming mind doesn’t allow anyone the luxury of claiming writer’s block). With lucid dreams, the scope for dream creativity seems to extend even further; the dreamer ‘wakes up’ inside the dream and can consider her writing projects while engaging with her imagination in one of its purest forms.
Chris Olsen and Kira Sass from the US have produced a stunning documentary on lucid dreaming, in which beautiful images accompany dream anecdotes, and researchers share their insights and their most formative and powerful lucid dreams. It’s called ‘Wake up! Exploring the Potential of Lucid Dreaming.’
Something to try: When you next realise you’re dreaming, try thinking about your current writing project in the dream; call up one of the characters to talk with, or ask the dream environment for help with some element of the plot. Be ready to be surprised by what materialises!
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June 23rd, 2009
I’m thinking longingly of Chicago. It’s like an ache in my throat. I’ve never even been to the place, but it’s about to host one of the most fabulous yearly conferences: a dream conference where people connect through their dream imagery, spend days immersed in creative workshops and presentations, art exhibitions and special events, and end up at a rollicking costume ball where everyone dresses up as a dream they’ve had and dances the night away.
Since I can’t be there this year, a friend of mine has graciously offered to present my paper on lucid dreaming, synaesthesia, and sleep disorders; it’s about dreaming into fiction. Writers daydream books into existence, they draw on original imagery embedded in their unconscious and freely available in dreams. I love that about writing – there’s no end to creativity because new dreams are dreamed every night and can be expanded by day into fiction. Could there be a more fun career? OK, I know it’s not all just dream-fun but masses of hard graft too, but dreaming certainly peps up the whole process big time.
When I think of IASD (Int. Assoc. for the Study of Dreams) conferences, I think of the friends I’ve made and the dreams I’ve heard. I remember dressing up as a blonde hippie-chick for the dream ball; standing in the booming silence of giant redwoods in a forest in Sonoma; watching in my dream as a monkey woman gives birth to a smiling baby. You come away from a conference like that not only replete with your own dreams, but filled with the powerful, emotive dream images of others. It makes for a kind of turbo-boost of creative imagery which can split your mind so wide that suddenly it’s teeming with story energy and you can’t wait to leap to your desk and write by day… and close your eyes and swim back into your dreams at night. Well, that’s how it affects me, anyway. Do I sound jealous that I’m not going this year? I am!
Something to try: tomorrow morning when you wake up, don’t get up immediately. Stay in the same position for a moment with your eyes closed and think back to what you were just doing in your dreams. Even if all you remember is a shape or a sound or a feeling, that’s fine. Using your dream image/colour/emotion as a starting point, take a pen and write for five minutes without stopping to think. See what happens… surprise yourself.
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