[beyond the pages: the twitter diaries] a thread on dreaming
i woke up this morning and transferred a scene from my dream to my wip. that task made me think about how much dreams have been a part of my writing process.
i am forever grateful for dreams. i really am a dreamer. like i legit dream dreams. have ever since i was a little girl. it's a beautiful thing, and i will never take it for granted. ever.
i remember in 6th grade we took a trip to the edgar allen poe house, i heard a man recite "a dream within a dream," and it was then i realized i had something special. i used to think everybody dreamed as i did. lucid dreams. in living color, like you were transported to the wildest parts of your imagination and allowed to explore all the things you couldn't possibly explore in one lifetime.
i remember i met someone a few years back on the subway, and he said he didn't have dreams, and i was visibly sad for him. like i wanted to cry because dreaming has always been a part of me and i could never imagine a life without dreams. then i didn't have to imagine a life without dreams because they stopped coming for a while. recently, i experienced a time where my dreams had stopped. i would only see darkness when slept. i don't know if it was because i was stressing beyond my capacity or what, but i wasn't dreaming, and i was sick about it. i thought my brain was literally broken. and i know i'm probably too old to think that, but when shit just changes up out of nowhere, rational thought is not an option for me.
ever since i was about 6, i would dream the most vivid dreams. they felt so real, like i just lived a second life when i went to sleep. i could make out places and faces and often times i had a hard time separating the dreams from my reality because they felt so real. i'd see strangers in the street and think i knew them because they looked exactly like people from my dreams. or i'd swore i'd been to a place i might have never traveled to because i went there in a dream. as i got older, they got more intense, more lucid, more like realities to me. so i started writing them down because i knew there was something there. then by age 8, those dream journals became the framework for harleigh rae.
now, most of my stories are fleshed out in my dreams before i even get a chance to outline the story. it's like i get half the work done there. i sleep longer when i’m writing a new story and take frequent naps in between my writing sprints. people think i'm not "working hard" or " putting in the work," but, they can never fathom how much work i get down while i am asleep.
i travel a lot for my story. to the innermost parts of my mind that i only can access through dreams. sometimes, my characters visit me in my dreams. like they just pop up on the edge of my bed and talk my head off. and i listen to what they say and what they don't say. because that’s really when they are saying the most.
sometimes, i'll be transported to where the story takes place. i can always see the pavements they pound while they are going wherever they go to do whatever they do from one day to the next. smell their pheromones and the distinct scents of their home and the world around them. hear the reason why they melt when they are in their lover's presence or have my heart ripped out from the sound of their tears hitting the surface below them. touch their chest and feel the difference in the way their heart pounds when they are angry or flutters when they are enamored.
if i write just before i fall off to sleep or stuck on how something needs to happen or how to end it, i usually dream it moments after i close my eyes. it's like my co-writers are waiting for me in my dreams and i'm forever grateful for them. ending this diary entry with the 'in short' summation:
all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
— edgar allen poe
and those dreams within dreams become the stories within books.
— harleigh rae
