For whatever reason, my dreams refuse to be helpful.<\/p>\n
I know there are some authors who claim they get brilliant ideas from dreams. I don\u2019t necessarily hate those people, but I haven\u2019t met them in person either, so I\u2019m not prepared to say we\u2019d be friends.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve also read at least one article that recommended sleeping as a way to work through your plotting problems. The idea was that you should think about your story, specifically focusing on those areas that were causing you trouble, as you were lying in bed at night. Presumably, you\u2019d eventually fall asleep (after you finally got over the agony of being stuck on a scene that clearly just wanted to be an asshole), and your brain would continue to search for solutions while your body got the rest it needed.<\/p>\n
Then, at some point, either by dream or some early morning\/late night revelation, you\u2019d experience a breakthrough. You would have the answers you so desperately needed, and you and your story would live happily ever after, or at least experience some mild feelings of contentment until the next time it decided to dig in its heels and act like a fuckhead.<\/p>\n
That\u2019d be nice, wouldn\u2019t it? To be able to lay your head down on the pillow and then wake up in the morning with fresh ideas and a clear outline of your plot. It would be like some awesome version of the tooth fairy. One whose visit didn\u2019t require a painful, bloody sacrifice followed by the inevitable letdown when you realize her cheap ass is on a one-quarter-per-tooth kind of budget.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d love to be wired that way. But I\u2019m not. My dreams are lazy, free-loading bitches who contribute almost nothing to my fiction.<\/p>\n
If there ever comes a time when I want to write a story about some guy whose going about his day only to suddenly realize he\u2019s naked from the waist down, well, then I\u2019ve got material to draw from. Likewise, if I want to have a character completely forgets he\u2019s enrolled in a class until the day of the final exam, I have a pretty good handle on what that type of panic and despair feels like.<\/p>\n
But until either of these scenarios presents itself in my fiction, I\u2019ll have to do things the old-fashioned way, dragging each word through a swamp of self-loathing and insecurity until it finally lands on the page. Who needs dreams when you can have fun like that? Am I right?<\/p>\n
Even though sleeping has done very little to advance my writing, I am a huge fan of day dreaming, or zoning out as we call it here at Casa de Jenkins. I used to have a job that required me to drive a lot. I\u2019m talking long stretches of windshield time, like anywhere between 12 and 14 hours at a time. I worked out so many story lines while I was logging those miles, and every trip ended with a collection of napkins covered in nearly illegible scribbles.<\/p>\n
It was a happy time, creatively speaking, and I sometimes miss the Zen of that highway hypnosis, even though I fully admit it probably wasn\u2019t the safest way to operate a motor vehicle. Still, I think there\u2019s something to be said for letting your body handle the heavy lifting of a task while your brain checks out for a little while.<\/p>\n
I recommend letting your mind wander whenever you get the chance. The next time you have a chore that doesn\u2019t require too much in the mental department, like the dishes or yard work or vacuuming, don\u2019t fill your environment with a lot of extra sensory input. Don\u2019t turn on the TV or queue up music or an audiobook on your iPod. Instead, listen to the sounds of the task at hand. Things like the high-pitched hum of the vacuum cleaner or the vibrating growl of the lawnmower engine.<\/p>\n
Get lost in those sounds as they wash over you and then disappear altogether. Eventually, you will stop hearing them, at least on a conscious level, because at least part of your mind has gone out on a walkabout.<\/p>\n
Let it go. Let it play. It might bring back something interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For whatever reason, my dreams refuse to be helpful. I know there are some authors who claim they get brilliant ideas from dreams. I don\u2019t necessarily hate those people, but I haven\u2019t met them in person either, so I\u2019m not prepared to say we\u2019d be friends. I\u2019ve also read at least one article that recommended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[258,314,534,846,1066,1069,1299],"class_list":["post-8191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influence","tag-day-dreaming","tag-dreams","tag-ideas","tag-plot","tag-story","tag-story-ideas","tag-zoning-out"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}