Now that the conference is over, I’ve lost my voice – an odd outcome since the whole thing took place online, in literal silence (although it felt very noisy and lively): we had to write if we wanted to be heard. Maybe my voice giving out is a message that I need to be quiet now and look inward, after months of hurtling through the days with ‘to do’ lists as long as my arms and legs put together, due to moving house. Now, warmed by all the lovely dreamtalk, and forced into silence, I have begun to write stream-of-consciousness novel scenes; it’s all spilling out, characters are acquiring names and personalities, and the major events of the novel are jostling up against each other, waiting for me to record them and then work out how the hell they all interconnect.

Here’s a link to the IASD Psiberdreaming conference, which is still open for the next two weeks on a read-only basis.

‘You have truly written the “ultimate Parasomnia novel”. And it was a heartwarming story… you have certainly served the sleep medicine field very well, and in particular the area of Parasomnias, by raising vital awareness about this seemingly obscure – but in fact highly prevalent – set of sleep disorders that can wreak havoc on personal and family lives… I will be singing the praises of your novel.’

Often people only hear about sleep disorders when a horrific case of sleep violence comes to light, and there’s a tendency to think it’s something freakish that couldn’t happen to oneself. Sleep disorders often remain undiagnosed and so sufferers are inclined to fear that they’re losing their minds. Dr Schenck thinks it’s important to educate general physicians as well as the general public, so that such disorders can be diagnosed early on and treated before they erupt into violence.

To learn more about sleep disorders, check out Dr Schenck’s websites: www.parasomnias-rbd.com and www.sleeprunners.com

I’ve read some great stuff recently – Fingersmith, The Reader, The Post-Birthday World, The Help, One Day, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite, and short story collections by Helen Simpson, Ali Smith, Carol Joyce Oates and Ann Packer to name but a few. There’s so much brilliant writing out there and it never fails to excite and inspire me. I find myself thinking, that would be such an interesting subject to write on – I could do something like that, only different… The thing is, with novel writing it’s a question of narrowing the field down to what you really, really want and need to write about, as they’re so time-consuming. Someone suggested I write three or four detailed plots and then take my pick, and it’s a brilliant idea except I just don’t seem to work that way; the same cast of characters keep appearing in my mind’s eye and at some point soon I’ll just have to sit down with a pen and listen to them.

People keep telling me to see Inception, which is about people sneaking into other people’s dreams, and, like Dreamrunner, it apparently focuses on the uncomfortable edges of the unconscious, with nightmarish scenarios. It looks a bit flashy-action-movie-ish to me but the premise sounds interesting and I will make a point of seeing it at some stage (maybe the DVD stage). For now, I’m gearing myself up to Dreamrunner and keeping my fingers crossed it’ll go down well J

No Man & Other Stories to Help Haiti is a charity eBook of short stories by Little, Brown authors, with all proceeds going to UNICEF to help children affected by the disaster. When my editor asked me if I would like to contribute a story, I was in a writing frenzy, days away from the final deadline for Dreamrunner, and so I sent in a story I’d already written, The Kielius Fish.

On publication day, which marked 100 days since the earthquake, I downloaded No Man along with the Adobe e-reading software and I’m now enjoying the first eBook I’ve ever owned! It’s great to have it just a click away while I play around with half-written poems or catch up on emails, and I’ve been dipping into it while the baby naps. There are some wonderful stories in there, all very different from each other. If you’d like a copy, just click on the book cover.

          Writing Dreamrunner had its fun moments but at times they were overshadowed by stress. I’ve learned valuable lessons from writing under pressure though: I now know I can write when I’m nearly dropping with exhaustion. I know that I can write in the tiny, precious spaces in the day when my baby is napping (and she’s really not a big daytime sleeper). And I know I can plan a novel in a non-organic, non-dreamlike way, with a chapter-by-chapter plan and word-count goals. Phew! So now I’ve written two very different novels in two very different ways. It’ll be interesting to see how they compare. My editor asked if I was planning to write another novel this year… I’m not. It’s such a brilliant feeling to know I’m absolutely free to write whatever I want to write now; there are no grandes lignes to set up, no ‘voice’ to slot back into each time I pick up my pen. I can be whoever I want to be again.

          Here’s to writing freedom!

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