Writing the Dream

Or, How to make the most of your sleeping imagination


I don’t know about you, but I always seem to be doing something when I could most use the time to do nothing. Doesn’t matter what it is. And if I have to think about it, even worse – because it’s all time I could be using to think over my plot and the scenes I want to write, and every time I think about it I add something more to the mix and make it better.

So instead, I think about it in that time when I’m lying in bed with the light out but I’m not yet asleep. Head on pillow, warm, comfortable. Right. Where did I get up to? Oh, yes. Now, how shall I write that scene?

I don’t know what it is, but I get my best thinking done at that time of night, when I’m relaxed and the day has already been and gone. Maybe it’s that my brain is already starting to shut down, and I’m accessing the part of my mind that creates dreams. Maybe it’s just a ‘me’ thing. But I get more plotting done when I’m lying down to sleep than I do at any other time of day, and I freely admit to spending a lot of my time thinking about my writing. It keeps me invested, too, if I can sit down and imagine my favourite up-and-coming scenes, or even ones I won’t get to for months yet. (I’m a linear writer, meaning that I start at the beginning and write my way through ‘til the end. A non-linear writer writes different scenes whenever they think about it, then slots them all together later. I just can’t do it like that.)

Sometimes I’ll even have a dream that I can use for ideas – I’ve dreamed whole novel ideas before, the sort of thing that makes the basis for an entire plot. Maybe I’m just lucky – or maybe I primed myself to it by thinking about plots before I went to sleep. Who knows? If it happens to you, as soon as you wake up for God’s sake write down as much as you can remember before it fades! The same goes for any fantastic idea. Too many people have forgotten what could have been their magnum opus for the want of a piece of paper, and it’ll never make it to print that way.

Give it a go, anyway, and see if it works for you. I’d be interested to know if it does.