The other night I saw the last scene of my book in a dream. No, really. It was bizarre. I wasn’t acting as one of the characters—I was just hanging in space, observing. (Although come to think of it, I may indeed have been acting as one of the characters.) It was more or less like the ending I’d written, but not quite.
The truly startling thing is that I remembered it, word for word, when I woke up. I wrote it down right away (I keep a flashlight, pencil and notebook beside my bed, having lost far too many middle-of-the-night ideas and dream revelations in the past) and in the morning rewrote the end of the book. The changes are small but, for me, important.
Anybody else dream parts of their writing?
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No, although I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas while drifting off to sleep.
I have however dreamt songs. Complicated ones with the chord changes and main riffs and everything. I just dreamt a nice one the other day but since I’m not actively writing songs any more, I didn’t do anything to lock it down and have probably forgotten it.
Lisa, that’s amazing. Do you hear it in your dream or see the notation or both?
I agree on the drifting-off-to-sleep time. I once jumped about two feet off my bed when I heard a voice, loud and clear, quoting Andrew Marvell to me just as I was drifting off to sleep. (“The grave’s a fine and private place/But none, I think, do there embrace.”) Try to sleep after that!
I dream things in a sort of half awake/half sleeping mode where it’s like watching television…
Don’t you wish there was some kind of recorder you could just plug into your head?