Sleeping Just to Dream

I have thoughts.

Too many, if we are being exact.

They don't leave me alone. They pester me all through work; I've even found that I enjoy the mundane tasks because they allow me to daydream more. And sing. But I am a far better daydreamer than I am a singer. If I could make money daydreaming, well let's just say that's why I want to write.

My daydreams are like movies and I am the director. I can watch the same scene countless times with minuscule changes until I see it just the way it's supposed to be. I can even do this late at night or in the early morning when the daydreams mix with actual dreams. I look forward to this every night as I lay down. It is the mixing of my careful construction and my unconfined id. The ideas are replayed and tweaked, but still hold and element of unexpected and irrationality; like the actors I invented are improvising while still following my script. It allows me to discover what is plausible and what is just ridiculous, to get to know the characters, to discover the people. That's how characters go "Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it."

I've never been one to get ideas from dreams. Countless writers, artists, songwriters, etc say "I don't know I just woke up and it was there" or "I saw him/her/it/etc. in a dream." No, my dreams have always been too strange, even for the wildest of fiction. Sure one dream gave me a glimpse of the most beautiful person I've ever seen and lingering curiosity about the importance of moldy bread, but never anything beyond a humorous anecdote. I pity anyone who tries to "inception" my brain; my subconscious is straight insane.

But lately, really lately, that's changed. In the last week I have had four dreams that I wanted to write in the morning. They were still disjointed and odd, but they had a plot. And in every single one the characters and plot were wildly different. That's where the problem comes in; too many thoughts. My brain jumps from story to story so that on top of my eight plus started stories, I now have three more with less than ten pages and another just kind of looming in my head.

I would really like to just finish one. Preferably the one with over a hundred pages first. I want to do this. For real.

But at the same time I'm afraid I'll never finish anything because when I do, what happens next? I don't want to lose my characters. I don't want to face the inevitable rejection of the real world.
My greatest fears are failure and rejection, yet I picked a field that is 95% exactly that; maybe I'm a little masochistic.

I'm discouraged by the poems I read by my photographer and journalism friends, the blogs of family members, my Dad's articles. I know I'm not that good. I can't put my images into words. I can see it, but only because it lives in my head.

C'est la vie. I will go now to dream and revel in the hours that I have to be truly creative and completely in a world I invent.

But first I'll end with one of my favorite quotes:

"You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible...This is what separates artists from ordinary people; the belief, deep down in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away." -Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird