I have weird dreams. I'm not worried. As far as I know, all of you have weird dreams, too. Which makes weird normal, in this case. Last week I dreamed about being part of a literary agent team. It was awesome. My kids were in the dream, of course, because any dream where I go back into the workforce would have to take them into account. I left them happily with a caregiver and went to an exciting meeting with a group of other literary agents. We had a book we couldn't wait to sell.
It was an awesome dream.
The next night, I dreamed about Alan Tudyk, or as I know him from recently finishing Joss Whedon's DOLLHOUSE, Alpha. But in my dream, Alpha wasn't scary at all. He was just a little crazy and sad. My dream character (because it definitely wasn't me) found herself fighting against some invisible organization that wanted us all dead. My partner in crime was some tall brown-haired guy I've never seen in my life. I'm going to assume he represented my husband (tall, dark-haired, and handsome). :)
Being a writer, I woke from each dream with book ideas. Maybe this happens to you, too.
You just can't ignore a dream that could give you THE IDEA, like Stephenie Meyer and her sparkling vampire dream about why Edward wanted to eat Bella but just plain couldn't.
So I woke up and scribbled out an outline in chapter titles and 2,000 words of intro. Good idea? Probably not, considering I'm only 15-20k away from finishing my current work in progress (or maybe I should say I'm all of 15-20k away). Sometimes it seems I'll be done with this book tomorrow. Other days, it seems I could take another whole month.
But the dream was so shiny and fresh, I just had to record the feel of it!
What do you think? Odds of your dreams becoming bestsellers? How often do dreams derail your WIP progress?
I've only really had one dream that I started writing and ran with it. I'm 10k into it now and getting ready to go back to it. It's paranormal and not in my usual style (though it's still romance, but I LOVED the premise. I'm hoping that it will turn into something (and it's certainly more epic than my historical romances), but given that it's not yet written, I'm not getting my hopes up too far. I have other ideas from dreams, but this was the only viable one.
ReplyDeleteTwilight was from a dream? (I picked it up after the fourth was published, so I blame my lateness in not knowing this bit of trivia.)
Yay for paranormal romance! I don't care if people say it's old. I'm still in love with that genre. I hope I get to read your book someday, Noelle!
ReplyDeleteYeah, Stephenie Meyer's story is that she had a dream that sent her hurrying to the computer to write it all down. She wrote every day until it was finished. The dream was the scene where they're discussing why they can't be together (because he's a vampire). Pretty intense emotions in that scene, so I can see why she'd get it stuck in her head.
*crosses fingers* May all awesome dreams turn into bestsellers.
Great idea to write it down. I hope it turns into that mega-bestseller.
ReplyDelete