Writing to the end of Dreamrunner has coincided with a tragic case that has come to light in the UK, where a devoted husband, Brian Thomas, strangled his wife of 40 years while having a nightmare about youths breaking into the camper van they were sleeping in together. My heart goes out to this couple and their family. The fact that I’ve been exploring the impact of a similar situation in Dreamrunner means that I’m not only aware of this case of homocidal somnambulism but quite a few others besides; my main source book for the novel was Carlos Schenck’s excellent ‘Paradox Lost: Midnight in the Battleground of Sleep and Dreams’, which details many case studies, interviewing couples whose lives are affected by violent sleep disorders.

What is going on in a person’s psyche when they kill in a dream? What’s the symbolic meaning of responding to a perceived threat (in the Brian Thomas case, boy-racers in a carpark disturbed the couple’s sleep and prompted his nightmare about a break-in) with violence? I don’t have the answers, but I do have some thoughts about alternative ways of tackling violent sleep disorders other than just taking a course of pills which represses the condition without addressing the underlying cause, and I look at these other possibilities in my novel. Dreaming is powerful, sleep disorders are common, and in a state of automatism, where the mind is no longer in control of the body, terrible things can happen.

Parasomnias – sleep disorders – are coming more into the public eye, and this can only be a good thing for sufferers who often think they are losing their sanity until a doctor in the know is able to diagnose them. Dreams are all too often shrugged off as ethereal phantasmagoria, but when something this tragic happens in the ‘real’ world as a direct result of a dream, it becomes brutally apparent that the unconscious mind is a power to be reckoned with.

It’s been an uphill struggle completing the manuscript with a tiny baby to care for; a case of feeling as if my head is about to explode each time I sit down to write because I have to re-enter the entire novel and balance it all in my head: characters, plot-lines, motivations, consequences, red herrings, parallelisms… and my baby continually jerks me out of that feverish wrapping-up of things. Not that I’m complaining! I already can’t imagine life without my daughter, and motherhood just means that I have to learn new dance steps like novel-breastfeed-walk-in-the-park, or blow-raspberries-to-make-her-giggle-write-novel-scene-rock-her-to-sleep. It’s quite a fun game.

I have to say, though, I’m seriously thinking of writing short stories and poetry again rather than tackling a whole new novel, as it’s so much easier to write short pieces when there are distractions… as my agent once said, babies are the best time-wasters ever and the best grown-up toys!

Having said that, I already have an idea for another novel… J

          The only thing I’ve been consistently writing is a sort of diary, each entry covering a week of my new life and usually scribbled down at 3am with my baby daughter dozing off on one shoulder. As a first-time mother, I’m learning that writing can be squeezed into tiny spaces and that even on four hours sleep, I can be imaginative (though it’s a slog). When my babysitter’s here (and I wouldn’t have a hope of finishing Dreamrunner without her), I write in the next room, separated by a glass door that doesn’t shut properly, and with constant, happy interruptions – I’m welling up with empathetic emotion while writing a dramatic scene in the novel when suddenly it’s time to feed the baby, or I’m rushing to form an idea which could really be something when I need to go through and sit with my pretty little girl snuggled to my chest until she falls asleep, before transferring her to the sitter and going back to my laptop.

          So I’m writing Dreamrunner in a helter-skelter sort of way, not really pausing to look back at this stage as I just don’t have the leisure to. It’s a new way of writing – I used to love editing and re-editing my chapters as I went along, inserting new threads and removing all the extraneous stuff, and just fiddling – and so far, this new way is exhausting (there are times when I’d honestly rather be catching up on lost sleep) but it’s good, too, because it’s teaching me to be flexible with my writing.

          I’m realising that novel-writing doesn’t have to be done in peace, by the sea; it doesn’t have to be done in grand instalments, nor does it have to be an intensely private, don’t-you-dare-look-over-my-shoulder endeavour. It’s a word-by-word thing, so it can be grabbed here and there… kind of like lost sleep. J

But for the first time, I’m doing things very differently. I’ve written a detailed chapter plan for Dreamrunner and I’m systematically going through it. Sometimes it feels dreadfully mechanical; I sit at my desk and say, Right. It’s Monday. I need to write chapter thirty… OK, so what am I writing about? (I consult The Plan) Aha, it’s the scene with the street kid and the sapphire amulet. Where’s my pen? Here we go…

This change in technique is because of the deadline, of course, which I’ve realised I can either think of as a creativity-crusher or a creativity-liberator. A lot depends on the way you see things. Although having The Plan is a bit organised for my taste, I’m trying to see this as a valuable novel-writing technique, and it’s true I understand much more now how some writers manage to bang out two or more books a year – they must have a Plan!

The challenge I’m facing now with Dreamrunner is that although I know exactly where I’m going in terms of chapter-by-chapter plot development, I need to keep writing organically within this structure so the unexpected can still appear and the magical heart of the novel keeps beating freely. I find daydreaming in a café by the sea with a pen, The Plan and a chocolate croissant to hand does the trick. J

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!

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.

I got home, still feeling lucky and happy, and found a letter waiting for me – my first proper fan mail. It was sent to my publishers, who sent it on to me. It came from a French woman who’s suffering from bone cancer. Someone had left a copy of Breathing in Colour at the Mayo Clinic in the USA, and a nurse passed it onto her. I read her story of threatened amputation, losing her teeth and hair, nausea and morphine doses, using every last Euro for treatments… and I read about how Breathing in Colour had transported her to India, giving her some respite. I compared the woman’s life to my own and my eyes filled with tears.

This letter reminded me of why I write – to reach out to other people and, if at all possible, to help them in some small way, even if it’s only through providing a brief distraction from a darker reality. So even if writing a book sometimes feels like scaling a wall – when the plot isn’t fluid, or the structure seems to have gone all wobbly – you just have to push on with it. I know I’m nearly at the stage when I’ll be flying through Dreamrunner again, and if the finished novel helps just one person, one day, then all the effort will have been worth it.

A lot of people have a fear of writing. Students come to me and say: ‘I’m frightened that what I’ve written won’t be original.’ Or: ‘I’ve completed my story/novel/poem but I’m afraid to try and get it published – what if nobody likes it and it’s a giant flop?’ I try to get students to write through the fear, break the ice in their own heads by using techniques such as flow writing (writing fast and wild, without hesitating), as this enables contact with the unconscious mind rather than allowing ourselves to be stifled by our critical, editorial function. Once creative writing students start to produce pages of writing and discover the knack of picking out the gems from the dross, their excitement at what they discover often effaces any fears they might have had.

I ask my students (and myself, of course; that’s the handy thing about teaching writing – it encourages you to practise what you preach), What amazes you? What hurts you? Where does the emotion in your freewriting lie, and which topics does your writing spiral back to again and again? These are the ones to work with.

Here’s a good start to intense writing: ‘My greatest fear is…’ Now write without stopping for eight minutes. Be prepared for anything. Some people say they can only work with fear driving them forward. I think of it in two ways: Either fear is what makes the story remain embedded in its deep, dark place, in which case, chase it away, or else fear is the beating red heart of the story, in which case, let’s write about it!

One of the most interesting discoveries over the past weeks has been noticing the way that people who know me very well and have now read the book suppose they know which scenes/characters have been lifted from my own life. One person said he recognised my husband in Taos; a tall, steadying travelling companion. Two others differed in their opinion of which of my childhood friends Poppy was based on, whereas the truth is, I invented her off the top of my head purely to bring a ray of light into that grim episode of Mia’s life and didn’t associate her with anyone I’d known. On another, non-personal level, one friend recognised a snippet of Bollywood song lyrics she’d sent me in a travel-diary email she wrote while backpacking in India with her young daughter, while another will certainly recognise Alida’s computerised baby dolls, as she has used them in her own sex-education job.

I think people have fun playing this guessing game when they know the author – I do it myself – but fiction writing is rarely as clear cut as it might seem. For me, it’s an intricate weaving process and I’m just as likely to steal a character trait from a five-second piece of dialogue I catch while passing someone on the street, as I am to daydream that character trait into existence without ever knowing just why or how it occurred to me.

It’s probably safe to assume that for every new person who reads a novel, a different version of it will spring into existence, because whether we know the author or not, we each apply our own memories, associations and impressions to the fictional world we’re immersed in. It makes me smile to think of Breathing in Colour multiplying in interpretations as it starts to be read by all these individuals, each with their own personal take on it. I like this interaction: my imagination fusing with the reader’s personality and life experience, triggering an imaginative response to become something absolutely unique.

Now I understand what people mean when they say a book is no longer your own once you publish it!

Then there was work on Dreamrunner – I talked with my editor about the imagery and colours we could use for the jacket (yes, they’re already working away on the cover, almost a year before it’s due to be published!) and I also managed to fit in some hours by the sea to write the next chapter, where seven-year-old Leo finds a ‘dolphin eye’ on the beach and recovers from an alcoholic potion-induced hangover.

In the middle of all this, a weighty package arrived from the UK (I’m in Portugal at the mo, where Dreamrunner is set) and I tore it open to find a very lovely, purple-wrapped and ribboned box containing a bottle of champagne! It was from Piatkus Fiction, to congratulate me on the publication of Breathing in Colour. I plan to crack it open this weekend on the beach with three of my best friends and my husband – a gorgeous way to celebrate.

Ah… the writer’s life! J