Take Direction From Your Dreams
Some people claim that a dream is a wish your heart makes. I would disagree with that, since so many of my own dreams are scary, insane bursts of blood and color and gore. An aunt who analyzes dreams thought that I was undergoing a severe period of stress in my life, but these happen often. The last time I had these dreams, however, I decided to commit them to paper, and then submit them to my first ever flash fiction publication—which then accepted them for publication.
I was pretty ecstatic, and when my aunt and I discussed how I learned about the publication—which was through a fellow writer who tends to write about gore and cannibalism and other colorful, delightful subjects often—she said that was the connection. I was inspired by a writer I really like, had a cannibalistic dream (about a circus of cannibals, by the way; a longer piece of fiction may follow), and instead of simply filing it away to be lost forever, I actually wrote it down and went even further by submitting it.
It has taken years for me to develop even a bit of confidence in my fiction again. Sure, I won a few contests and had some things published when I was younger, but after my daughter was born I turned to editing, then nonprofit and nonfiction blogging to make a living. I love my job dearly, but somewhere along the way I just stopped writing what I loved most, and even my fanfiction—which gets hundreds, sometimes thousands more hits than my writing today does, and that’s without me even pointing traffic in that direction like I do my blogging—dropped off once my daughter learned to walk.
I am not blaming my lack of follow through with my dream on parenthood—but maybe adulthood. A lot of us lose sight of what our dreams are, or even unconsciously give up on them; so maybe our unconscious dreams are attempts at nudging us in the right direction—even if they are bed-wetting worthy. I can assure you that the next time I have another nightmare (which was last night, actually, and it’s got some wonderfully dark plot points, from the construction of my old high school and a murderous scandal involving a very unlikely suspect), it’s going to be jotted down as well. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even publish it.