{"id":7951,"date":"2013-04-12T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T13:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=7951"},"modified":"2013-04-12T08:00:13","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T13:00:13","slug":"7951","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=7951","title":{"rendered":"It’s Easier to Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, one morning I turned on PBS for the child, sat on the couch, and fell asleep. I’d love to give you a time of year or a month or anything, but this is happens so often that I could probably start every day of my life with the same line.<\/p>\n

When I startle awake, I remember one scene in particular: two heavy aircraft (air limo sort of nonsense, really) on a tight curve, racing around a building. As on pilot rams and cripples the other aircraft in an attempt to pull ahead of his bitter rival, he finds out there’s a baby in the crashing aircraft. He rushes to land, desperate to get the baby out, but the cops are already there when he gets down.<\/p>\n

If this sounds familiar, is should — it was the story seed that would become my NaNoWriMo 2012 novel.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I don’t usually come out of dreams with good stories. Partially because they’re often weird as hell and incomprehensible. Or they’re bizarre sex dreams about characters from Leverage. (It was a year ago, but I haven’t forgotten our special bond, Sophie<\/a>.) Or they’re vivid terrible nightmares, though that’s fairly rare.<\/p>\n

So while there might be some interesting imagery (aww yeah<\/em>) or some weird otherworldly concept, its not often that I get much of\u00a0 story seed out of it. Waking up from that particular dream and writing up 1000 words of story was pretty exciting.<\/p>\n

And I’ve never repeated it.<\/p>\n

What I find both interesting and frustrating about the whole thing is how far the dream image (one I had always been eager to capture) didn’t fit in with the story I had eventually written. My characters changed. My plot evolved beyond what I initially got from the dream. The baby doesn’t even really fit into the effin’ story, which is a shame because as a motivation for her father, she’s very effective.<\/p>\n

Moreso, though, is that I’m still not talented enough to capture the detail and nuance of action that I got from the dream — its a weak spot for me. The way the aircraft burned, the smell and the terror and the desperation. <\/p>\n

I’m inadequate. I can’t put the words together right. <\/p>\n

All the same, I look forward to getting the story out and getting it right one of these days. I don’t know that I’d want to do it again (as though I have a choice?) but its a nice thing to have tried out. And hey — I still got a story out of it. Just not the one I expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, one morning I turned on PBS for the child, sat on the couch, and fell asleep. I’d love to give you a time of year or a month or anything, but this is happens so often that I could probably start every day of my life with the same line. When I startle awake, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[314,534,1069,1072],"class_list":["post-7951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-dreams","tag-ideas","tag-story-ideas","tag-story-seeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}