Dreams as Muse

Late with my blog again! Where do these days keep disappearing to?

I had a strange dream last night, and as I was trying to describe it to my spouse this morning, I thought back to other dreams I've had, particularly the ones I've tried to make into stories. Have you ever done that, used a dream as the basis for a story? Legend has it that Frankenstein started as Mary Shelley's nightmare, and a lot of non-writers think that all a writer has to do is convert their dreams into stories. I have tried it, and it's not as easy as those non-writers think it is.

Dreams may be extremely vivid while I'm having them, but fade quickly once I wake up. As I struggle to write down the beginning, the middle and end are fast disappearing from my memory.

Dreams may make perfect sense while I'm having them, but not in the cold light of day. When I try to explain a dream to my spouse, or write it down, I wind up using such explanations as 'somehow I know this', 'for some reason this happens', and so on. Stories don't work when they're full of somehow and unknown reasons, so I need to fill in those blanks as I convert the dream to story. Most of the time, that plays havoc with what came later in the dream. So far as I can remember it.

What limited success I've had in using dreams is when a particular dream manages to inspire a scene. A single scene. That's about the best I can hope for. And sometimes, even that doesn't work out. Of course, that doesn't keep me from dreaming.

So, how well do your dreams work as a muse? See ya next weekend. Trudy