Have you ever woken up from a dream, convinced that the dream held the secrets to the universe, that you’d had an epiphianic moment and that sharing that dream with others would lead to amazing, wonderful things?
And then, after you’d been awake, maybe you’d tried to write it down, or tell someone else about it… and as you tell, the dream fades from gold to dull, gray lead. You can’t get down on paper what made it so wonderful. Or as you try to describe it to your friend you and they realize at the same time that the dream was silly, or simple, or worse of all incoherent, and you feel that sinking sensation in your chest that tells you that there are no amazing dream-solutions to everyday problems.
Well, last night I had the most amazing, mind-blowing dream. During the dream I felt as if on the verge of an intellectual and creative breakthrough. Even during the dream I knew that this would make an amazing story, or even the jumping-off point for a story, of phildickian enormity.
I awoke and spent several minutes in bed, going over and over the details, trying not to lose them, but waiting for that moment when I would either lose the feelings of awe, or the details would fade from my mind and become part of the background noise of my life.
And another lovely thing happened. The dream stayed coherent. The idea remained amazing.
It stayed amazing even as I wrote it down on paper (tsk – two years since my last paper journal entry). Now it’s part of my story ideas collection and I can flesh it out.
I know I must seem a horrible tease but I don’t want to post it here on the internet. Sure, all my writings are protected by the Creative Commons license but I still don’t trust it.
Email me and if I like you and trust you I’ll send you the story fragment…