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?
