Writing as Dreaming

How we write is how we dream

“The best art carries this sense of inevitability, of allegory, myth, dream—a truth that has always been there, that we already know in some deep part of ourselves.” — Lauren Acampora

Dreams are important teachers for our writing— both how they function (in their strangeness, their internal logic) and also in their freeness, their wildness. So often the greatest obstacle in our writing is the “editor/critic” arriving before we have a chance to get down a first draft. Dreams (and that includes nightmares and day-dreams) demonstrate that our creative capacity is alive and innate; they teach us new vocabulary, they reveal new images. All to say: dreams teach us how to write.

1. Pacing & Location
   Dreams ignore the rules of normal time. Pay attention to how quickly or how slowly your dreams move—in a dream, we may find ourselves five years in the future, or on another continent, and only realize how strange this is upon waking— the fluidity of the dream circumvents the disorientation and makes it, for lack of a better word, “believable” to the dreamer. Likewise, in a poem or short story or novel, the reader is carried by the rhythm of authentic and alive language. The reader becomes, in a sense, a dreamer— the one dreaming but also the one being dreamed. Especially in first drafts, try playing with wild changes of scenery, slowing down or speeding up, skipping backwards and forwards across years.

2. Wilderness (& the Strange)
   How often, in a dream, do odd objects or people find their way into otherwise “normal” locations? A blue pig, a best friend from elementary school, a shining diamond amidst a pile of slugs. Dreams teach us about