It's been a really long time since my last post, but life sometimes gets in the way of things. I have, in no way, stopped writing and have a few projects under my belt. Some are write-y, some are world-y. I'll be starting a new job at the end of the month (conducting middle school orchestra!) and will be spending way more time than any normal human should surrounded by scores to pick out the music for next year.
Ultimately, I am beyond ecstatic at this change of events. It will just be a lot of work.
Anyways - writing. How do you feel about dreams?
The other month I had a pretty intense dream about shadows and death (I know, morbid) but the dream wasn't entirely my fault. I traveled to Haiti on a service trip and was taking Mefloquine - an anti-malaria medication with side effects including "Vivid nightmares". Fun, right?
Well, this dream was so vivid that it left me daydreaming about it for weeks after having it. Almost like when you finish a really good book and you have that month waiting period before starting another because you're finding some way of immersing yourself into it in your head. You might think I'm crazy, but think about it really - I know I'm not alone in this. And if you're not getting that feeling, you need to read better books.
Anyway, this dream. I realized after a few weeks that this could really be a great baseline for a novel so I've started writing it. This doesn't follow my usual steps - writing a full outline and crossing off events as I write them - but the story was just so.....right.
Maybe some stories just need to be told.
I'll be updating my word count to reflect this new project :)
Along the same vein, I've realized that a lot of my old stories have dream sequences in them. As I've gotten older and read more I've come to hate them. Dream sequences are....boring. Unless, of course, they have a specific meaning behind them like...A Nightmare on Elm Street where your dream is actually a creepy-scar-faced guy murdering you and your friends. Obviously sleeping and dreaming are integral to that plot.
Regardless, dreams are pretty powerful and I think some could really work out well in the novel world. (Please don't take this post as liberty to start trying to publish stories about forgetting your homework or showing up to school in your underwear!)
Until next time!
