What Day Dreams May Come

Do you ever feel like adulthood is vastly overrated? I mean, when you were a kid, there was all this empty time and space inside your head. You could entertain all kinds of internal, unlikely scenarios in your daydreams. Then you made the mistake of growing up and bang. Your brain is crammed with bills to pay, groceries to buy, places to go, people to see, phone calls to make - and you wonder where the hell you're supposed to find any kind of mental silence. And then someone asks you about daydreams. Sure. I daydream. About having the capacity for long stretches of mental silence in which to spin out grandiose tales of true love and high adventure. May the other way around.

You had to work pretty hard to get my attention when I was a kid. Some worlds are more real than others, and frankly, if this world expected to hold my attention, it should have come up with something better than me stuck in the backseat of a car for days on end while the family drove to my military father's next post. I suspect there are vast stretches on interstate in these United States that I've never seen despite the fact that I traveled them. I was too busy riding the huge, far too sentient black horse I didn't actually have and expertly fencing the pirates and cutthroats we ran across. Also. I had a pet black panther named Scott. Yeah. Dunno. I was 10. Apparently, Goth was my aesthetic. We won't talk about how long ago that was.

 I was a good kid - one of those kids who so rarely got into trouble that all of the other kids looked at me sideways. But. When I did get yelled at - it was for daydreaming. Or not putting my book down to do whatever chore my mother had tasked me with doing. But honestly, reading is just hitching a ride on someone else's daydream.

So these photos? They're the Pacific Northwest. I show them to you to justify the fuzzy, far-off look in my eyes (yes, even now, after the lament about adulthood). Anything could be out there in that fog and in those trees. Anything. Aliens. Monsters. Bad guys. Adventure. Seriously. Are there people who don't daydream? I think the only weird part is that I started writing my daydreams down so I wouldn't forget them and somehow parlayed that into a way to let other people in on those daydreams, too. Which is my way of saying that daydreams and night time dreams both play a huge roll in my writing. They're tools and they're gifts. I try to treat them nicely. Even when my friends and family have to reach across a dinner table and smack me to get my attention. A few of them shook their heads when I first got published and muttered something about 'great, just encouraging her'.

Psychology Today printed up an article that's a daydreaming trouble-shooting kind of guide. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-power-daydreaming
It actually has a few pointers for those of us lost in adult-brain. I think I'm going to practice a few silencing exercises. I'll catch you in the dreamtime. I'll be the one on the black horse being shadowed by the black panther.

Professional Daydreaming

When I was a kid, I was often lost in thought.  I'll admit, there were more than a few times where, say, I had absolutely no idea that homework or some other special project was assigned, because I was just plain somewhere else when the teacher told everyone about it.
I was on other worlds.  I was holding off a horde of orcs at one end of the bridge while my companions escaped across it.  I was leaping into an escape pod before the starship exploded.  I was discovering ruins deep in the heart of a rain forest.
This was one of those things that led teachers to shake their heads at me. 
Except my English teachers, because I was reading plenty, and writing these crazy things.  Doing terrible sketches. Scribbling and scrawling.
There are reams of notebooks and loose paper, still hidden way somewhere, of these daydreams made tangible.  Over time they coalesced into proper descriptions of places, outlines of stories, defined characters.
Over time, I've been able to take those daydreams and get paid to share them with you. I am literally a profession daydreamer, albeit an organized one with charts and notes and pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back.  Still: PROFESSIONAL DAYDREAMER. How awesome is that? 
Hopefully awesome enough that Mr. Stokes can forgive me totally whiffing that "Covered Bridges of the Northeast" project. Sorry, Mr. Stokes.

Dream a little dream...

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

--T. E. Lawrence

A writer is working even when he's looking out the window...

 

 

As a kid, the woods in my back yard were filled with ewoks and jawas. Godzilla was often in the field beyond. An old, big-trunked tree that fell served as a horse, an elephant, and a speederbike. The top of that fallen tree became the base for a hideaway. I had a kite I flew in the field until the string broke. That winter, my kite came down from the trees and we played again the next spring...but he was so much more than a kite. He was a falcon trained to work with me. He was a space ship.

 

Looking back, I was alone in those woods a lot. It started when I was young, I guess, because my dad used to carry me out there and I always wanted to hug the trees.

 

I bought my childhood home a few years back and now my bedroom windows overlook those same woods.

  

 

Yes. I daydream. A lot. I play in my fictional worlds. I listen to movie scores that have the same tone of the scene I'm going for, assemble my cast, lean back in my chair, shut my eyes and let them loose...or I write my own score and discover them through the melody that is them.

I've been working on something with dark, horrible events. It is not as easy to tap into. I have found that active thinking through logic on the side of ego and considering the attitude of "more more more and I don't care who it hurts I must achieve my agenda" create that part of the story. Daydreaming doesn't get me there. Maybe I have not found the right music for that.

Otherwise, daydreaming gets me through writer's block...or a walk in the woods does. :)

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…))

Hold Fast to Dreams

"Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow." ~Langston Hughes

By Kerry Schafer "Ring, ring -" "Hello?" "Hi, may I speak to Kerry Schafer, please?" "That would be me." "Kerry, this is Ms. Dream Agent. I just read your query and sample pages and I have to tell you I am blown away by your writing. In fact, it is so brilliant I don't even need to read the rest to know I want to sign you at once." "Um -" "In fact, I shared your pages with my best friend who is an editor at one of the big 5, and she's prepared to offer you a contract immediately..." What? It's my daydream, leave me alone. I can't remember a time when I didn't daydream. The content has changed over the years, sure, but the practice is pretty much the same. Once upon a time it was fairy princesses and knights in shining armor. And then amazingly cute boys who for some reason found me much more interesting than their real life counterparts at school seemed to do. These boys turned into men, intelligent and attractive and mysterious. All daydreams are not about lovely men, however. I have, in my mind, played brilliant piano solos on stage, talked to famous people, written complex and fascinating novels, and fallen in and out of love. There was a period of time when magnificent horses lived in my humble little barn, and I rode them at night, through the dark and wind beneath the moon. In my mind I have endless conversations with people that I would never dare to have in real life. When I'm angry I can say what I am really thinking without seriously damaging a relationship I care about. I can quite a job, or start a new one and see how it feels. I discuss issues at length with friend and foe, solve the problems of the world, create a brighter future. If I don't like the ending of a book or a movie, I just make a new one up. Once, when I was a teenager, a well meaning camp counselor drew me aside. She told me that daydreaming was unhealthy, a bad habit that I needed to curb. I chose to listen to Langston Hughes instead. Hold fast to dreams, indeed. Daydreams keep me going. They provide hope when things are dark, and sometimes the insight and courage to solve a problem that seemed insurmountable. They also lead to writing. How could anybody ever write a story or a novel without extensive daydream time around the characters and how they live their lives? Reality is highly overrated. As I often say - "nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." To all of the other dreamers out there I say - keep on dreaming! You never know when we might just dream ourselves into a whole new reality.

These Dreams

It didn't begin with pirates, but certainly, as a daydream theme, pirates featured prominently. So did horses. And a black panther named Scott. (No clue where that one came from.)

I learned daydreaming early. Dad was in the Air Force. When he was given a new assignment, our worldly possessions were packed up into a moving truck, the cats and the kids (usually in precisely that order) were packed up into the car with the itty bitty travel trailer hitched to it. We road tripped it. First from Alaska to Nevada. Then from Nevada to Arkansas were Dad left us with my grandparents while he went to Iceland. We joined him several months later when he found housing. That airplane trip was interminable. The trip back from Iceland - I still get queasy thinking about that one. From the east coast, we drove across the US to Dad's new post in Idaho. None of this counts all of the camping trips, vacations spent driving from hither to yon and back again. Long hours. Strapped into the back seat with nothing at all to do but stare out the window and make up stories in my head.

I was entertaining myself, I thought. But now, looking back, I wonder. Given all I was seeing, all of the places we went, and the new landscapes we experienced, I suspect I was processing - integrating all of that newness into me. Most of my fantasy stories included whatever landscape we were in. My folks were big about stopping at all of the educational sites - the historical markers where some battle had been fought, or where some major first had been accomplished. We read them all. I'd spend the rest of my day imaging what living through that historical event had been like. Daydreaming myself into history - I always survived, though, because I had the best, fastest horse. Naturally. As a result, I may remember far too much about some of those historical sites.

Every place we went, everything we did was fodder for some new story taking place in my head. Daydreaming became critical when I hit puberty. I stopped sleeping. Not entirely, of course, but it took me two to four hours to fall asleep every single night. This lasted for years. I never told anyone because as far as I knew, it was normal. Didn't everyone lie awake at night telling themselves stories in their heads, watching the plot unfold, then erasing it, rescripting it and running it again until it was perfect? Until it made them feel something, anything at all? Yeah. We eventually worked it out that I needed medication, but it took a very long time. In the meantime, daydreams were the only way to survive. Regular life wasn't all peaches and cream. In daydreams I could be anything and anyone I wanted.

By the time I was twelve, the stories rattling around in my head had piled up to the extent that I had to try writing them down. This is where the pirates came into play. So did the black panther. Did you know that pirates will treat a twelve year old heroine with a great deal of respect if her best friend is a melanistic jaguar? It's true.

Daydreams didn't go away as I grew up. I still fall asleep every night running some story through the movie theater in my head. It's never the story I'm working on at the time. (Cause you'll come up with something brilliant and have to get up to write it down, don't you know, so always switch to something other. These should be the stories you only tell yourself - the ones no one else on earth will ever see or hear.)

The point is that I don't think day dreams are optional. For me, at least, they are part and parcel of how I process my world. There's research out to indicate that dreams blunt emotional trauma. I suspect daydreams do, too. They help us try on identities. They guide us through good time and bad.  I suspect they keep us sane. Ish.

The Rainbow Connection

by Allison Pang

Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices? 
I've heard them calling my name.

Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors? 
The voice might be one and the same. 

 Something about this particular song sums up the whole daydreaming concept best for me. Always has - maybe it's just one of those "children of the 70's" things, but to me it's more about giving those inner voices a chance to speak up.

Daydreams are about playing the "what if" game...but it's when you allow yourself the additional pleasure of envisioning the outcome *you* want.

 Almost like a grown-up version of let's pretend, and there's no guilty reality allowed to intrude...whatever you happen to be thinking about - relationships, family, fame, fortune, the past, the future, anything and everything is fair game. Sometimes it's hard to find time to listen to those voices. Real life just sweeps in and tries to silence the whimsy. Bills, deadlines, family...responsibilities.

 "Keep your feet on the ground," as they say.

 So I have to sneak my daydreaming in as I can - small snippets in the car on the commute home, when I'm baking (particularly meringues. They take hours. Hours of waiting and stirring and waiting and stirring. Prime time for daydreaming since there's not enough time to do anything else...). When I'm in boring meetings. (Not for amateurs Always good to bring a notebook to scribble things down on.) Doing dishes. Walking the dog (when I had one.) Cross-stitching. Honestly, I daydream best when I'm doing something slightly active with my hands. Nothing that requires a huge amount of focus, but it's almost as though just giving my body something lightly physical to do frees my brain up to start thinking down other paths.

 Mental meandering has its own rewards.

DayDream Believer

by KAK  

Yeah. I can't begin to discuss daydreams without the Monkey's, "Daydream Believer." ~pulls out the bellbottoms and feathers the hair~  Go on, get your snap on.

I am a devotee of daydreaming. I still do it with my mouth wide open, thus earning the "Most Flies Caught" award. If it's an engrossing daydream, there may be drool involved.  Once upon a time when I was a bleached-blonde there were many a comment about hearing the wind blowing between my ears.

One of the awesome things about being a writer? I totally justify staring into space as "plotting" or "letting the scene develop mentally before transcribing it." Sounds plausible doesn't it?

Thing is, as a culture, we don't really allow ourselves to simply think. We have to do. Actions are means by which we are judged. Yet, if we don't think before we do, then ... ~insert social, political, or economic punchline here~

Three cheers for daydreaming, I say. Exercise your brain. Get your imagination fired up, even if you're not a writer, painter, or an artiste. I daydream most when I am on the treadmill ('cause really, what else are you going to do? focus on jiggle of your thighs, the wheeze coming from your lungs?) or in the kitchen. The latter can get a little dicey (~rimshot~ thankyouillbehereallnight). Sometimes, oh but sometimes, I'll just sit and stare out the window. Thinking.

Daydreaming.

How about you? When do you give yourself time to just think?

Taking Time to Dream

by Jeffe Kennedy

This was my grandmother's tablecloth. I brought it in my suitcase, because my mom wanted to do an all-white table and she asked if I had one big enough. Because I'm the one who goes through the things left behind by the grandmothers and the maiden aunts, I had a stack. I measured six of them and we settled on this one, along with the twelve matching napkins.

I didn't bother to clean it up before I stuffed it in my suitcase - not much point of that with Irish linen.

Besides, I usually cheat with tablecloths. I came up with this trick a while back, where I throw the tablecloth on the table, spritz it with a spray bottle and let the wrinkles settle out. Some plates and low lighting and good enough!

I knew this would not fly with my mother, however.

So, she put the cloth and napkins in the washer on Wednesday evening and in the morning, I ironed them dry.

It took quite a while, too.

Not something I really ever spend my time doing.

But, as I pressed each napkin, front and back, then folded them into halves and then quarters, creating the fine creases, I found that I enjoyed that time. There's something to be said for rituals like this, the things that take time and patience. It gave me the space to day dream a little, to think about my grandmothers and the ending to Middle Princess.

I love how the holiday rituals require that from us and gift us in return.