Dreams

Wrote this yesterday. Was too bored to post it.

Whenever I try to write a story, I feel absolutely bored with my lack of imagination. Author blogs that I read [Robin McKinley, Malinda Lo, Sara Ryan] often explain that writing—real story writing and not blog writing—is like a job, where I need to have goals and keep at it day after day no matter how I struggle to form a coherent story-line. I’m still an adolescent-apprentice writer, which means that when I get kinda good ideas, I slap them all together and then forget about them for months (while I go to school/work), and then look at them again when I’m on vacation to see if they’re salvageable. None so far have been salvageable. I have dozens of little story projects going on, and I think I should focus on just one, but when I focus on just one, my imagination dies.

Since I’m a failure as a storywriter right now, I like to explore my dreams, because I seem to have plenty of imagination when I dream. I take my dreams very seriously, i.e. when I wake up from a dream worth recording, I spend my whole day returning to the dream-world, trying to remember tiny details and straighten problematic plotlines. I try to stay true to the dreams, i.e. not making stuff up or resolving details when the dream was cut short or when I don’t remember. Some dreams, I write down months after I dreamed it. Geez, am I self-absorbed or what? But no, I like writing about my dreams not because I want to interpret them but because they’re little stories. Maybe over time, I can look back at them, and make them into real stories. Which reminds me—

DREAM #7

I am running with a woman who is wearing a red dress. She has long black hair and white, white skin. She is tall and slender. She is so beautiful, and I am mesmerized. We are running along hallways carved exquisitely with birds and trees. When I look at the birds, they take flight and their wings are made of multicolored textiles. A story forms in my mind—there is a man dressed in black robes looking for the woman. He has grey hair and a pale face. Suddenly, we are on a cliff and looking down on a waterfall. I see the glitter of golden scales. The man grabs the woman and makes her look down at the waterfall. I do nothing but watch. The man pushes her off the cliff and she falls, silent. I watch the way her dress ripples as she falls. I am horrified and sad. I say—You murdered her. You are guilty. He looks at me calmly, and I notice how grey his eyes are. He says—Yes, I am guilty. I need to pay for my crime. He walks to the edge of the cliff and falls off. Before he falls away from my sight, his body suddenly curves upward and he is floating, circling me, flying. His flight is joyous. I ask—Why? Why does she die and he lives? The answer comes—Because he has been forgiven. She was too afraid, and that’s why she fell.