We all dream, assuming we make it to REM sleep anyway. Of course, if you aren’t reaching REM and dreaming, you are going to go crazy rather quickly if studies are to be believed. Dreams, by their nature, are a product of our subconscious.
Your subconscious is that delightful thing that comes up with all of our most random thoughts and inspiration. That last word should be something that you have high interest in as a writer. Our subconscious is going to be the thing that fuels our stories and keeps writer’s block at bay.
Now, if you go to the little link off to the side there for Holly Lisle and go to her Mugging the Muse class, it has a pretty worthy way of getting your subconscious working for you. That isn’t what this is about. This is about just listening to what your subconscious hands you every single day. Write down that material and eventually something good will fall into your lap.
All it takes is buying a small notebook or journal and a pen. Keep both beside you when sleeping and anytime you awaken in the middle of a dream, quickly write down whatever you can remember as quickly as you can. Once you have it down, you can roll back over or get up and get your day started. I suggest going back to the entry a little later and seeing how much you remember and if you recall anything you might not have written down.
Tuck these things away and when you are feeling like you just can’t come up with anything interesting, pull them back out. Read through them and let your mind go wild rather than analyzing them for some hidden clues. The more you open your mind up to anything, the sooner it will latch on to something that might work. It might not even have anything to do with the journal entries. As long as it comes up with something, that is what is important.
Who knows, maybe you will find that there is a whole series of stories and novels hidden away in these journals just waiting to be written. It isn’t easy to sit down and write after just waking, but the end product can prove to be invaluable to you as a writer.
