Thread: Dreams and Writing

A passing comment on another thread made me curious.
There are times I get dreams related to writing -- sometimes I dream up whole poems, other times I get ideas for stories or an opening if I'm stuck somewhere. The poetry part is the most intriguing... Not all of it stays all the time though, some of the idea gets lost when I wake up.
When I was in 6th grade, I'd made a poem in my head during the last moments of sleep and it was still fresh when I'd woken up -- I'd written it down then.

What about you? Do you dream up stories or poetry?

That's so odd. I've never dreamt a poem or story, although I think that all dreams are stories in themselves, and certainly a vast majority of them are so full of creativity that there're bound to be some inspirational bits here and there.

The older I get, the more dreams become my only source of imagination and creativity.

hi candid I personally never dream of poetry and writing, you must be the chosen few.
I dream of other things though.
however there was some stories from the side of my mother who once told me she dreamed up a maths homework she was could not do
at home as it was too difficult.
she said she was very upset she could not do her homework ( she loved maths), went to bed an there it was in her dream.
she got up wrote it down and turned out it was the correct answer, whatever it was the problem solving the school hads asked her to solve.

Brendan, yeah, dreams are so creative that they can be stories in themselves. But I was talking about the actual stuff, full poems with the words and everything.

Nacian, I know what you mean, and it's funny how it works sometimes. Like for me, it used to happened for hard questions during the exams -- some of the solutions to maths or physics questions came to me in my dreams after I got home.

I don't dream anything that much that i can remember but for some odd reason song lyric's and ideas for songs come very easy when i'm just about to sleep or just as i'm waking up. The only problem is that i have to be quick to write them down or i forget them, interesting how the mind works when we are asleep or semi conscious.

Originally Posted by Bluesman

I don't dream anything that much that i can remember but for some odd reason song lyric's and ideas for songs come very easy when i'm just about to sleep or just as i'm waking up. The only problem is that i have to be quick to write them down or i forget them, interesting how the mind works when we are asleep or semi conscious.

Yeah, they say the subconscious mind is most active 10 minutes just before sleeping and 10 minutes immediately after waking up. Poems do come to me easily that way too, but I'm too sleepy to write them down, so most of the time it's lost.

Originally Posted by candid petunia

Brendan, yeah, dreams are so creative that they can be stories in themselves. But I was talking about the actual stuff, full poems with the words and everything.

Nacian, I know what you mean, and it's funny how it works sometimes. Like for me, it used to happened for hard questions during the exams -- some of the solutions to maths or physics questions came to me in my dreams after I got home.

really?
I wish Idid. so strange and very lucky at the same time. I am intrigued now.

In fact, it happens to me all the time. My "epic" about the character Magician Zero started with a series of really odd dreams I had starting in 1997. They were very realistic, sequential dreams, full of details and dialog--not like typical dreams, which tend to jump around, but more like short movies. I could always remember them extremely well when I woke up.

Dreams don't necessarily give me much in the way of plot for stories, but they're otherwise rich in resources. You'll never have as hard a time trying to find the exact right word to describe something as when you're attempting to describe something from a dream.

There have been a few times I saw, heard, or composed musik in a dream. One of the more recent times was really memorable, an exceedingly odd dream in which I was hand-sewing a quilt in the upper room of an old country home, looking out at the lawn of a small ranch, beyond it an idyllic scene of mountains, trees, lush green grass, etc., with white lace curtains blowing at the window (that didn't have a screen). I was more or less lucid in the dream and was like, "What the...? What am I doing here?" It was all nice enough--I could even feel the light, soft breeze that was coming through the window against my cheek--but I couldn't understand what I was doing there. Also, my mom was there. She was quilting, too. The quilt we were working on was all white--but had some really fancy stitching on it, all white-on-white. It was amazing. Then this song started to play, just a couple of acoustic instruments, a guitar tuned very low and a stand-up bass. The intro played and then I heard myself (except without my throat all scratchy like it usually is) singing a song about--I'm not kidding--the planet Europa. I was LISTENING to myself singing like on a record, I was not singing in the dream. The song was very beautiful and ethereal-sounding.

I remembered the song very clearly when I woke up and I wrote it down. I don't know why my dreaming brain would think about a song about Europa, but it's not a bad song, sort of sweet and sad, like the person singing it is imaging being far, far away from Earth, looking at Earth as a tiny blue smear in the far distance.

I have other examples of what you're asking about, but I have to get back to work. Interesting topic!

Just before falling asleep my mind goes to all different places. It's crazy the stuff I can come up with before falling asleep. I do get up and scribble stuff down if it's something I'm terrified I'll forget. Or, I'll run the same words over and over and over in my head, until I can actually see what I'm thinking. It's strange. But it does work. I'll get up in the morning and write it out, word for word. Most of my ideas come when I'm in the in-between stage of sleeping and being awake. Right before your thoughts skip and jump, back and forth, colors, words, images. Then I'm out, and my dreams don't give me anything! lol

When I read a lot, I dream about the characters. That can be fun! ;0) I went on a date with Jacob Black once! ha ha....totally confused me... I'm Team Edward! lol

I'm like Nacian, no dreams of writing or poetry. Definitely not poetry. I will admit that I have adopted amazing scenes from dreams I've had in the past and I am going to use them in my fiction novels. These are things I would never have imagined had I not dreamed it.

Otherwise, my dreams are based on themes from my life - -- unpreparedness, singlehood, childlessness, nostalgia.

I can't say that I've dreamed actual writing. I have had dreams that I thought I could turn into some pretty good stories. (I have since turned them into stories, but I have my doubts on whether they're 'pretty good' or just plain awful). In one dream I had, there was a poem involved in unlocking some type of cave thing. I wrote it down, but haven't tried to incorporate it into anything.

"In the silence of the path we tread
With the light from the sun, the moon, and the stars
The flame shall burn in the depths of the sea
And the rage of the world will then be ours."

I'm not much of a poet, even in my dreams.

I've never dreamed any kind of poetry and/or lyrics (I come up with all of that stuff about noon, generally when I'm on my own and humming some 80s song, the lyrics to which totally escape me, forcing an improvisation), but I have had a dream or two I've tried to turn into stories. The most recent one, and also the one which convinced me it was an all-around bad idea to try basing things off of dreams due to the nature of dreams, was a story about zombies attacking a peace summit on a space station. It wasn't as bad a concept as it sounds, and while I was able to dream up (pun) a decent plot for it, in the end I couldn't go very far with it due to my knowledge that all of the characters were inserts of either myself or my friends. I couldn't distance myself enough from the reality of the dream to make it work as fiction. I just couldn't.

I've had dreams that turned into stories. My dreams tend to be rather strange and all over the place. But they usually aren't specific stories or poems.

Now the other night I dreamed about a spreadsheet that would help us keep track of member benefits. I actually did put that to use. Dreaming about work is not fun though.

I'm vice-versa, I use my dreams as inspiration. I write down all my dreams on a notepad beside the bed every morning when I wake up. Just a quick note of it, then later during the day when I have time I either write a poem on it or a short story. Dreams are so weird they make the best stories.

Originally Posted by Scarlett_156

Then this song started to play, just a couple of acoustic instruments, a guitar tuned very low and a stand-up bass. The intro played and then I heard myself (except without my throat all scratchy like it usually is) singing a song about--I'm not kidding--the planet Europa. I was LISTENING to myself singing like on a record, I was not singing in the dream. The song was very beautiful and ethereal-sounding.

I remembered the song very clearly when I woke up and I wrote it down.

I know what you're talking about.

Originally Posted by Tiamat10

"In the silence of the path we tread
With the light from the sun, the moon, and the stars
The flame shall burn in the depths of the sea
And the rage of the world will then be ours."

Tiamat, that's beautiful! Even my sister read it and she said she liked it. The lines hold such deep meaning too.
I like the phrase The flame shall burn in the depths of the sea. Shows the intensity of the passion.
And the rage of the world will then be ours -- that's so poetically beautiful.
It's like talking about a small group of people who are on a quest to show others the truth of existence -- silent and unacknowledged at first, but the passion will soon kindle in the hearts of people, and the whole world will finally rise as one.
Also, if you've dreamt those lines, they cannot not be beautiful (from what I've seen from experience ). And I'm in love with these lines, seriously.