Guided Lucid Dreaming (aka How to Fill The Plot-hole)

So, @JeffeKennedy asked us to read the article "The Virtues of Daydreaming," and comment on if /how the researchers' findings apply to our writing.

I am 100% dreaming fiend. 

Day or night, crowded room or utter solitude, I dream. I let my mind have a go at whatever is the issue niggling at my mind. As a wee lass I had incredibly vivid nightmares; the sort that would result in me waking the entire household. The only way to get to sleep and stay asleep was for me to embrace Guided Lucid Dreaming (GLD).  It's not quite as hug-a-tree as some folks want you think. It's very simple, and it is the means by which I do all of my plotting, character creations, world-building, etc. GLD is my go-to method for fixing any story problem from plot-holes to flaccid conflicts.

How is GLD different from regular dreams or plain old *gasp* thinking?  I'm no neuroscientist. I'm more likely to tell you it comes down to drool/no drool.  Heck, I'm no New Age Guru either. I am, however, going to use a term the NAGs love to clarify my distinction:

Intention.

Guided Lucid Dreaming is all about dreaming with intention.  It's like telling your mind, "Go where you will as you will, but you're going on this Palomino with flaxen coat and chipped teeth. Oh, and poor thing is allergic to apples and hay too. Have fun." As the dream begins, you keep reminding yourself of the imperfect chuffing horse in order to keep the dream focused. Fairly soon, your brain accepts the restrictions, and moves forward with the Palomino and its flaws as your only tethers.

How do you dream with intention?

1. Pose the question to yourself -- Envision the issue with which you need help.
2. Hold the question in your mind -- If worries about the mountain of missing socks or the wholly inappropriate tirade of your boss try to intrude, mentally push those issues aside and focus again on the question.
3. Let your mind wander within the framework -- From the incredibly absurd to the horrendously practical, don't limit yourself. Your mind is downright magical. It will eventually present the solution.

You'll note I've said nothing about your physical state. For some folks, being still (aka, lounging) works best. For others, repetitive physical activity (aka, the monotony of running) creates the necessary mental quiet. Some folks need to be surrounded by external quiet to achieve internal quiet. Tuning out the external noise functions as a sensory "all clear" for other people.  How you achieve your zone of internal serenity is up to you. 

Once you've achieved internal serenity, frame your question, hold it at the fore of your thoughts, and dream.

Dreaming Up Novels

I took this photo in Vieques, an island in the Caribbean, off Puerto Rico. It's an infinity-edge pool with the ocean beyond. I use it a lot on my desk top, etc., because it puts me in a good frame of mind - relaxed and peaceful, just as I'd be, sitting in that place.

State of mind is hugely important, I believe. Recently a (very successful) writer friend of mine asked me about my writing process. She's much more famous and sells FAR more books, but she envies the critical acclaim my books have received. (I told her to console herself with her millions of fans and piles of money, but she only laughed and persisted.) In truth, her process hasn't been working well for her, because she keeps getting slammed hard against her deadlines. Though she outlines *extensively* the last few books have gotten harder and harder to write. I suggested that she try writing the next book without an outline. Take a month and write for discovery like I do. She asked how I do that - how I hold the story in my head without an outline.

Which is hard to explain.

Except that it puts me in mind of this article on the virtues of daydreaming. I've saved this for a couple of years as a reminder to myself that daydreaming is good. It's one of any number of studies that show that daydreaming - idle mental time - promotes creativity. I need the reminder because my childhood programming, the corporate culture I work in and other influences, such as rigorous martial arts training I engaged in for over a decade, all told me that daydreaming is bad. I'm meant to be engaged in the conversation of the people around me, not staring off into space. I'm supposed to pay attention on those conference calls and in meetings. I should be alert and aware at all times, not dreaming of other things.

One thing that martial arts training gave me as a lasting lesson, however, is that cultivating mental quiet is good for more than being aware of my environment so I can anticipate attack. Mental quiet also allows me to hold the story in my head. In the right time and place, allowing myself to fall into a daydream state - or the DreamThink, I've called it in the past - lets me spin those stories.

Our question this week is whether we cultivate daydreaming to come up with our books and, if so, how we guide or direct that.

When I wake up in the middle of the night, I don't worry about it. I don't get up as the sleep specialists say to do. Instead I snuggle in and daydream about the book I'm writing. I do try to guide my DreamThink to whatever I'm working on, but I don't insist on it if another story edges in. I try to be peaceful about it and let my mind drift. If I start thinking about worries or daily cares and lists, that's no good, so I redirect myself back to the fantasy.

Sometimes I wake up early, an hour or so before the alarm, and that's terrific DreamThink time, as I can cook the story right before I get up and write. Sometimes I fall asleep and actually dream. Other times I drift in that perfect twilight state where I'm completely relaxed and cozy and my mind simply floats.

During the day I might daydream. I love gardening for this and other kinds of manual labor. Listening to audio books can induce this state. Something in the story I'm listening to might trigger me and I'll start dreaming about my own story. Then I have to back up, because I stopped listening.

In all of this, I think the key is not to censure myself. I'm a writer, so I pull that card now if someone accuses me of zoning out on the conversation. I just give a brilliant smile and say, sorry, started thinking about my book. This carries FAR more cachet than my childhood rep for dreaminess did. At work, I've realized everyone forgets to pay attention to every nuance of the meeting or call. Maybe it helps to be middle-management now, but I have no shame in asking someone to repeat the question. As for the martial demands that I be alert and aware... let's just say that I write books MUCH more often than I fight off attackers. And that there's a time and place for everything.

The final piece of being careful not to censure myself is to let the daydreaming flow as it wants to. This is a part of myself not bound by rules. When I write, when I edit, then I can impose structure and refinements. For the DreamThink, I give myself permission to go anywhere I like. To be awake or to sleep or be somewhere in between. To dream about what I'm working on or something else entirely. It's all part of the same stew and nothing is ever lost. It's like the primordial ocean, rich, full of life and endless productive.

What do you all think - do you use your daydreaming like this?

(OH! Also, I’ll be teaching a workshop that starts tomorrow, January 5. It’s for Outreach International Romance Writers on Sex as a Tool for Character Transformation. Non-members can register here up through the 5th. (As far as *I* am concerned, you can sign-up anytime, but OIRWA might not feel the same way…))

Dreaming Big - How Much Money is Super Big Money?

This Tuesday sees the release of Word Whore Marcella Burnard's BOUND BY INK. This is the second in her Living Ink urban fantasy series with a very cool heroine who's kickass in an unusual way.

Congrats Marcella!

So, this week's topic is: Dreaming Big: What Would You Do If You Hit The Super Big Money Book?

Okay, you guys know me - the first thing I want to do is parse this. How much is Super Big Money? For most of us Big Money is enough to quit the day job. That's actually pretty damn big, because you have to figure that either your sales are steady enough to bring in the equivalent of a decently paying salaried job plus benefits each month, or that your advance is big enough to last until the next advance. For example, I have a friend who got a $30K advance for three books, which sounds like really great money. It IS nice money and a hell of a lot better than a lot of writers get. However, if you spread that $30K over three years to see the books through to publication, then that's $10K/year or $800/month, before taxes, with no benefits. For reference, the US Federal Poverty Level for one person in 2014 is $11,670.

At the other end, I have a friend who just signed a deal for a $750K advance for three books. She's doing two books/year, so that's a very nice income by most of our standards. However, as the money changes, standards change. She found a $3.2 million house she likes, but can't afford it.

So... Super Big Money is how much?

Millions, right? Like the world's top earning authors. Ol' James Patterson comes in number one at $94 million. La Nora has a tidy $23 million income. With the HBO success of Game of Thrones, George RR Martin is a newcomer to the top earners with $15 million.

That number works for me. Especially as I'm feeling close to George right now, with THE MARK OF THE TALA at #25 in the Kindle store - all cozied up with George, Diana Gabaldon and Neil Gaiman.

I mean - a girl can dream, right?

And that's what we're doing here this week, talking the big dreams! So... what would I  do with that kind of money?

I'm going to figure that by then I would have done the prosaic: quit the day job, paid off the mortgage and various assorted bills. I would have set up my nephews (yes, Hope, I totally would!) and grandchildren with college funds, built my mother that mother-in-law cottage/wing she wants.

Somewhere in there, I'd remodel for my dream bathroom, which would look something like this.

That would be doable within where we live now. After that, I'd buy a house in the Caribbean with this bathroom (and everything else that would go with it).

That's the big dream - the house in the Caribbean. Yes, with plenty of guest rooms so all of my friends can come hang out. I'd travel, hit all those places on my bucket list, but I see myself dividing my time between Santa Fe and the islands. I'm not sure I'd need more than that.

Any money beyond that, I'd entail to scholarships and research. I'd love to be able to do that.

What would you guys do?

A Year of Writing Influences

Writing influences this year?

1. A dream
2. An editor
3. My CPs

Oh. You wanted more than that? Well, then. Grab your festive, seasonal beverage of choice, a fist full of holiday cookies (with frosting!) or candy and have a seat.


The Dream: Not gonna make you read through a retelling of a dream that only matters to me. Suffice it to say, there was a dream. It was one of those half dream/half nightmare affairs where someone or something else has control of you. Your protests and determination make no difference whatsoever. One line from the dream stands out because it made it verbatim into an Urban Fantasy called Nightmare Ink, which is due out in April from Intermix. The line was: "You are a work of art. Don't make me destroy you."

An editor: So, it may not have escaped your notice that I had been writing science fiction romance. And now I'm not. (Well. I am but we'll talk about that later. As in second quarter of 2014 later.) I adore my editor. She is spectacular at what she does - identifying issues and communicating those clearly. I never have any doubt how to fix something after she's sent me her notes. She's that clear. Well, when she asked me if I had any urban fantasy kicking around that she could take to the Intermix line, of course I said yes. I got to keep working with her!

My Critique Partners: I have multiple critique groups. Okay. Two. Those two groups encompass a wide array of writers. Every one of them liked the Nightmare Ink concept and worked with me in a lovely way whenever I struggled with feeling like I might be in over my head, which was often. I had a steady stream of encouragement, ideas, and suggestions. Emergency reads in the eleventh hour before I handed it off to my editor may also have happened. Then the cycle began again because the second book in that series is due just about any day now. Because *this* time around, I am doing my darnedest to give my excellent CPs plenty of time to work their red pencil magic before I have to hand it over to my editor.

How's that? Did I time my post to coincide with your need for a refill on that drink of yours? I hope so. And I hope you and your family and friends all have a tremendous holiday, and a happy new year filled with everything good.

Writer Dreams

by Allison Pang

This is probably going to sound rather shallow, but I don't know if I have specific writer dreams.

Wanting. Longing. Desire for THINGS to happen? Absolutely.

But not specific dreams.

I mean, on one level there's still a part of me that sort of gapes at the fact that I'm paid to write at all. But I guess the long and short of it is that I equate dreams as being somewhat passive.  That may not be a fair assessment, but I don't really give myself much time to dream.

I plan.

Or I suppose I give myself goals I think I can accomplish. Which is not always easy. The market is such a fickle thing for publishing. Sure, I might sell movie rights, for example...but in reality that doesn't mean anything - and it's nothing I can really influence once they're sold. A production company could sit on them for years, but until a project actually gets greenlit by a studio? It's dust in the wind. (Exciting dust in the wind, but still.)

And I blame my mother for this bit of uber-practicality, but I also think there's a bit of a defense mechanism going on for me. I dislike setting myself up for disappointment. Hell, even during the initial round of phone calls from agents and editors a few years ago, I sorta clamped down on all the excitement, terrified the rug was going to be yanked. I *still* haven't actually celebrated it properly yet. I probably won't, at this point.

Some of the things others have talked about this week - fan art, comic books, action figures - awesome things to want. I want them too. And frankly, I fangirl myself all the time. I do get some fan art...and I commission others, simply because I can.

I've got a comic book proposal out there for BoD. It may never happen, though - and that's okay. But I'd love to write for comics or graphics novels in general- which might be hard without experience, so I found an artist and we're putting together an online graphic novel that will go live in the spring. (Free, of course - but we're having a blast with it, and we're both getting a good learning experience out of it, and that's all that matters.) Yes - I'm plugging myself here, but that's okay. The site isn't officially up, but we've got a few sketches up at our SSD tumblr. More to come as we progress.

I'd love to write for RPG games. I entered a writing contest for a popular gaming company - which might not get me anything. But it might also get my writing seen by the head writers over there. Do I expect a job out of it? No - but it's a chance to leap over the slush pile and that's all I want. For now. ;-)

I'd love to write children's books. (Seriously, I've got book half-written in my head about a Pangolin and his Violin. I should probably put it down on paper just to make it go away.)

I guess what I'm getting at is that for me, I want to do more than write novels. Will any of these things happen? Maybe. Maybe not.

But what it comes down to is that I don't want to just dream.

I want to do.

Dreams Coming True - Not Always a Good Thing

For my contribution to this week's theme of dreams and nightmares, I have chosen to share a short excerpt from my unpublished contemporary fantasy novel, Swimming North, in which a character discovers his dreams lie closer to reality than he could ever believe.

Kerry

In the entire neighborhood nothing moved. The slamming of his car door sounded loud to his ears, as did the crunch of his footsteps on the frosty sidewalk.

He knocked. Called her name. It was early. He was going to feel stupid when she came to the door and demanded to know why he had wakened her from a hard earned slumber. But she didn't answer. Even when he pushed the ridiculous alarm, she didn't respond to the loud bleating.

The door was locked, but his misguided youth had furnished him with experience equal to its opening. His pocket knife, slid between frame and door, easily solved that problem.

When he pushed it open he found himself face to face with an unknown woman. His brain, trying to categorize her, came up with the word alien. The eyes a little too widely spaced, the nose too perfect, something vaguely wrong about the mouth.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end; he felt the familiar rush of adrenaline.

The woman looked up at him through thick lashes, hesitant, insecure. “Hello - you would be a friend of Vivian, yes?”

Her voice was lightly accented and he ran the gamut of known languages through his brain and failed to find a match. She wore low slung Levis and a simple, long sleeved black t-shirt. It was an ordinary black shirt, identical to a thousand others. Vivian had a shirt like that, with an irregular grey stain on the left shoulder, shaped like an amoeba. Vivian had laughed about that spot, told some story about bleach and the laundry that he’d missed because he’d been too busy watching her expressive face. There might be a thousand shirts like this one, but surely only one had that identical stain.

Before her hand emerged from behind her back clutching a knife, his own hand was already in motion.

He blocked the thrust, grabbed her wrist, twisted the knife away from her. Before she could scream he had wrenched her into the room and slammed the door behind both of them. She struggled but he was stronger. He pinned her against the wall and held her own knife to her throat. The blade was long, slightly curved, and stained with blood.

It moved him.

He leaned his weight against her, pressing the flat of the blade against her white throat so that the skin puckered along the sharp edge but didn’t quite break. “If you scream I’ll kill you,” he said.

With a shock of revulsion, he realized he meant it.

Her eyes never left his. There was no fear in them, but he read recognition of who he was, what he might do. The knife felt alive in his hand. An infinitesimal amount of pressure and beads of crimson would appear on the pale skin. He swallowed, tasting the desire.

With an effort he withdrew his hand, stepped back a pace.

Her chest rose and fell in a deep, involuntary breath. He expected her to flee, would have made no move to stop her, but she remained pressed against the wall where he had left her.

“Where is she?” A rawness in his throat cracked his voice.

“What makes you think I know anything?”

“You're in her apartment. You’re wearing her clothes. Tell me what you know.”

“Or what? You’ll cut me? Kill me? You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

In his dreams he killed. Swords, knives, the dull thud of flesh beneath his fists. Bones cracking, lips splitting. Always it was there, an undercurrent of violence that would not be quelled. He meditated daily. Put paint to canvas while immersed in the music of Bach and Vivaldi. And yet, his muscles knew how much pressure it would take to choke this woman; how wide the spray of blood if he drew the blade hard enough across her throat, exactly where to thrust between the ribs to pierce the heart, or the lungs, or make a slower death with a gut wound.

The woman’s eyes expressed contempt. She yawned, stretched her arms above her head, letting the fabric of the shirt stretch tight over her breasts, baring her belly.

"I understand you are some kind of artist. Would you really rather paint than kill, Warlord?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie felt rough on a tongue taught a rigorous discipline of truth. Warlord. They called him that in his dreams, the men who fought beside him.

“Come – I know what you are. You do not lie well. If you want her back, you will have to kill for her.”

“What exactly do you want?”

“Give me back my knife.”

He laughed, a harsh sound that grated on his own ears. “No.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. You should come with me. Your skills would serve me well.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. And you are going to tell me what you know.”

He took a step toward her. His hand raised the knife.

A smile curved her lips. “You are going to let me go, Ezekiel Warlord, because you know who I am.”

We Are Such Stuff

Dreams and Nigtmares. This post may be one or the other, because I'm not really here. At the moment you read this, I should be in Mexico, touring Mayan ruins. That's the dream. The nightmare was the vaccination series required for the trip. But back to our topic.

Science, brain imaging and neural mapping have put a dent recently in some of the more esoteric aspects of our sleeping lives.We've been told our dreams are nothing more than our brains processing through the day we've just finished, or that our brains are merely clearing the buffers. And yet. Carl Jung taught that a number of cultures consider dream life to be every bit as real as waking life. He cites one culture that teaches children suffering nightmares to go back into the dream and confront the monster - they must face down that which they fear and demand compensation from the fear - a song, a poem, something useful to the waking life of their people.

Demanding compensation from fear - I love that. The notion of treating your dreams as valid, as real, appeals to me. The practise flies in the face of the tendency to reduce the human animal to its most mundane, constituent parts (your synapses replaying your fight with your coworker).  It's interesting how while we're demystifying the workings of the human mind (no real magic or woo-woo stuff here folks!), physicists drilling down into the nature of reality keep finding more and more woo-woo.  Granted. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (who said that and where??) and maybe that's at play here because that level of physics, while it fascinates me, is way over my head.

But really. What's your take. Dreams and nightmares. Reality? Not? Some combination thereof? Think back to the worst, most terrifying nightmare you've ever had. How did you react? How did your body respond? How did that nocturnal imagery affect your waking life? Or did it? Now recall the greatest dream you've had. Same questions. Those things colored your days, didn't they. Now define real versus unreal.

Ultimately, do we care about real versus unreal? I don't. Dreams and nightmares alike are a vast, deep ocean of symbols and stories. They feed into the books I write. What if books are to waking what dreams are to sleeping?

For anyone interested in monkeying around with dream symbolism and understanding, (if you suffer nightmares or night terrors, this book is vital) I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Living-Your-Dreams-Bestseller-Becoming/dp/0062514466/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295025577&sr=8-1 

Welcome to My Nightmare

Water lapped at my hips, fresh and blue and brilliant. The sand slid through my toes, the song of some ancient wisdom caught up in the grinding of seashells beneath my heels. One step and then another and then I was floating, the waves cresting against my skin, salt water dripping from my hair. Warm and aching beneath the sun, I swam, dimly aware of the coastal shelf falling away beneath me.


It was always the same. No matter how I raged at myself to stop it, to stay on the shore, I inevitably ended up in the ocean, lazy and careless. I opened my eyes and my mouth clamped down on the scream threatening to claw its way from my throat. Black now, the watery depths became nothing more than a pool of ink from which no light glittered. In the distance, the shore teased me with its safety, a golden patch on the horizon. I hovered over the abyss, my limbs like cement, my heart slamming against my ribs.


Would they be able to hear it? The syncopation of my organs pulsed the blood through my veins like the distressed flutter of a fish as it struggled against the current. I eyed the island, knowing I would never make it. I knew I would try anyway, knew I would fail. The current stopped, leaving me in a pool of silence, the water still and even. I held my breath, the barest movement threatening to broadcast my presence in the telltale ripples that would surely mean my doom.


Something brushed past my feet, and I bit my lip at its sandpaper sharpness. Like teeth for skin, biting and hooking into my flesh. I fought the urge to yank my foot away and closed my eyes.


Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.


My mouth formed the words in an empty prayer. There was another sharp tickle – a tug – jolting me from my ankle to my thigh. I looked down, already knowing what I would see, the scream forming on my lips. Blood poured from my midsection, my legs gone, cut out from under me.


When the fin broke the watery surface, my mind blanked, my arms flailing uselessly. I struggled toward that golden shore, the current suddenly picking up again. Sometimes I almost made it.


Not tonight.


The shark snapped at me, pain replacing fear, and all around me was the taste of blood and salt and death, my wailing voice ebbing into a haunted gurgle as it finally pulled me under the darkness…

- A Brush of Darkness

I’ve mentioned before that A Brush of Darkness stemmed from a dream…but parts of it were also drawn from my own nightmares. I often have dreams like the one above, usually when there’s something I need to do or look at. Though the setting may change – an aquarium, the bay, the ocean – the shark always remains the same. Sometimes it’s more than one (though it's almost always a Great White). My dream self knows the shark will be there. Sometimes I even see the fin, but no matter what I do, I *always* end up in the water with it.

Seems like an odd thing to dream about, but for me there is just something so primal about sharks in general. Maybe they're just tapping into my caveman brain. Maybe it's because I saw Jaws when I was ten and it scarred me for life. (And as a lovely aside, the events in Jaws were actually based on a series of shark attacks in 1912. Where? On Long Beach Island. Where I spent every summer growing up. Okay, maybe NOT so odd that I might have symbolically have issues with them...though I certainly don't have a phobia of any sort.)

Thankfully, I either wake up or barely manage to escape before something terrible happens. I still get freaked out by the concept. Hell, even when I play World of Warcraft and end up swimming out in the ocean all alone (and there *are* beasties out there), I get genuinely upset.

Thus far this week, we’ve been discussing dreams in general and there have been some wonderful discussions about it, but nightmares are a part of dreaming as well, especially repeating ones. I’m sure some nightmares are random – if I’d watched Jaws and then dreamed about sharks that night, I wouldn’t think much of it, for example. But timing with dreams can really make a difference. I’ve come to recognize that it usually means I need to pay attention to something in my life. If I can pinpoint the stressor and either defeat it or deal with it, the shark dreams recede.

Anyone out there have recurring nightmares or dreams that you think mean something?

Seeding Dreams

by Laura Bickle

Dreaming is a funny thing. Our subconscious uses its free time at night to be creative, solve problems, and just meander aimlessly. We often believe that we're at the mercy of our dreams, held hostage by the repressed portions of our psyches as they march us through odd landscapes and strange situations.

Often, that's true. The subconscious is determined to be heard, and we're stuck twiddling our thumbs, listening to it drone about our issues.

But it's much more productive to take one's subconscious by the scruff of the neck, give it a good shake, and put it to work. At least, that's the way I've always worked while writing.

Sometimes, I get stuck in the writing process. I get stuck on a character's motivations, stymied about a plot point, or vacillate on what should happen next in a story. I tend not to get much from brainstorming sessions. Sometimes, I pick up a random Tarot card or putter with my own perversion of bibliomancy - I open a book at random and see if I can find inspiration.

But, when all else fails, the only solution for me is to sleep on it. I keep a notebook beside the bed. Before I go to sleep, I write down what's bothering me about the story - I "seed" the dream with an idea or question. Usually, it's something like:

What's my antagonist's motivation?

Do I need an extra day in the timeline to smooth out my pacing?

What the hell does that fanged rabbit that keeps recurring in my story MEAN, dammit?

Before I go to sleep, I scribble my question down and leave it by my bedside. I set an alarm for a decently early hour of the morning, when I know I'll be interrupting my REM sleep cycle. I try to think of my problem as I'm going off to sleep.

And...more often than not, I wake up hip-deep in a dream that works out my problem. My subconscious has fiddled with the issue most of the night, and manages to spit out an answer about the rabbit, the motivation, or my missing day. I snatch up my notepad and write down whatever I recall about the dream.

Usually, I get pretty good results. Why waste waking time brainstorming when your brain is looking for something to do at night? Waking time is precious enough. Delegating to the subconscious can help. I used this a lot when I was testing software in my previous career. I'd awaken in the middle of the night, having conjured up a test scenario that I knew that the software was doomed to fail to address. I'd scribble it down and test it in the morning.

Seeding your dreams won't help, of course, if you don't often remember your dreams. You may have to time your REM cycles and set an artifical interruption, like an alarm, if you're a heavy sleeper. And it requires practice. But only you can pull your story from between your ears. May as well exploit all of the brain cells while doing it.

How about you? Have you had a dream that's helped you in your work (creative or not)?