Brainstorm
Feb. 24th, 2012 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaneramosI had an elaborate dream about a little girl who was kidnapped, in the UK I think. She was raised and lived her life with an Englishman in France starting around the time of World War II. Later on the story was narrated in her voice, revealing she was lured away but happy to go. The day she left she had to pretend nothing was happening and went outside to play with her younger sisters, taking nothing but a cherished stuffed animal. The man had told her what to do, but she relished the escape. She never went back. He asked her to come away with him to help raise his own infant son. Even after the man died she chose never to return to her biological family, and never regretted it. There was nothing obviously wrong with her family of origin but she despised them. In another part of the dream (another version of the same story) she was older and the man was younger and they were teen lovers who eloped, like my own parents. The story as she remembered it and as she chose to tell it may both have been different from what happened.
It was not a dream about distinct events, but about how different people perceived them. The whole thing occurred within the vaguely lucid context of me brainstorming a story idea. I am struck how it relates to a fictional character I was writing about yesterday, Deborah Saint-John, the Aboriginal English professor in Pilgrim's Cross. She told Trent how she was raised by a man not her father (no kidnapping involved), and chose never to return to the reserve where she was born. Trent expressed shock that she had cut off her roots so completely. I've known these basic elements of her background, but they found fresh vitality on the page, as they should. It brought to focus some common ground between these two characters. I needed something to draw them together, and behold! This is how the writing life becomes compelling.
Years ago I had numerous dreams fertile with story ideas. Recently I have been writing a little and thinking how to let go of the storyline worked out a few years ago to let it evolve more naturally, now. Maybe this is the key to dissipating the writer's block that has cramped my brain for a long, long time. It's encouraging when the veil of sleep becomes a storyboard. I may not remember all the details, but the dream suggests my subconsious has allied itself with my creative process, rather than working at cross purposes.
It was not a dream about distinct events, but about how different people perceived them. The whole thing occurred within the vaguely lucid context of me brainstorming a story idea. I am struck how it relates to a fictional character I was writing about yesterday, Deborah Saint-John, the Aboriginal English professor in Pilgrim's Cross. She told Trent how she was raised by a man not her father (no kidnapping involved), and chose never to return to the reserve where she was born. Trent expressed shock that she had cut off her roots so completely. I've known these basic elements of her background, but they found fresh vitality on the page, as they should. It brought to focus some common ground between these two characters. I needed something to draw them together, and behold! This is how the writing life becomes compelling.
Years ago I had numerous dreams fertile with story ideas. Recently I have been writing a little and thinking how to let go of the storyline worked out a few years ago to let it evolve more naturally, now. Maybe this is the key to dissipating the writer's block that has cramped my brain for a long, long time. It's encouraging when the veil of sleep becomes a storyboard. I may not remember all the details, but the dream suggests my subconsious has allied itself with my creative process, rather than working at cross purposes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-02-24 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-29 05:13 am (UTC)