Writing Dreams by Yu-Han Chao
Plagued all my life with various violent and surreal dreams, which I seldom remembered in detail upon waking, I always thought dreams were somehow not legitimate material for serious writers. They were frivolous, more so than the trivial details in mundane, real life, not artfully constructed like fiction, and translation into verse would only launch dreams further into an impenetrable realm of incomprehensibility.
But here it was, Kerouac’s whole book of airy, abstract dreams, with some recurring characters and minimal logic. And it was fun to read! Thus began my off-and-on habit of writing down my dreams. Incidentally, the first publication I ever had in a journal was a nonfiction piece called “Dreams,” a 13-page catalogue of a number of memorable dreams. It was sufficient encouragement for me to continue my nocturnal and diurnal dream-recording.
It’s hard to remember your dreams. If you wake up in the middle of the night from a particularly fascinating, vivid dream, you have to turn on a blinding lamp (or if you don’t live alone, duck into the bathroom) and at least jot down a few notes; if you go back to sleep without writing down a single clue, you will, 99% of the time, not remember a single thing. Even if you repeat to yourself while lying in bed, remember that it was the end of the world, remember the exploding cat, by the time you wake up again in the morning, all you will remember is that you had a really cool dream that you no longer remember. I learned this the hard way. I still feel deep remorse about some of the dreams I had forgotten because I was too lazy to write them down. If the degree of regret corresponds to the greatness of the dream, those must have been Pulitzer-worthy.
Writing down dreams is also a fun and organic way to update your blog, especially when no other blog-worthy material presents itself. For a while I collected excruciatingly cute pictures of bunnies and kittens and wrote reviews, but one day I realized dreams were perfect material for my blog! Thus my dream blog, Dreams Unlimited was born.
The convenient thing about blogs is you can label your posts based on labels and tags so when people visit they can click on subjects that interest them, and if one day a publisher offers you an advance to publish your entire blog (we all know this happens), the labels can be used to organize the posts into relevant chapters! For instance, my labels include: Aliens, Apocalypse, Babies, Food, Furry Animals, Gore, Hiding a Dead Body, Man-hating, Sadness, and Taiwan.
Share your dreams with us. Writers, write on, dream on, and dreamers, write on!
Yu-Han Chao is Poetry Editor at the Rose & Thorn Journal. Her poetry book, We Grow Old, was published by the Backwaters Press. Visit her writing and artwork at her Web site
I always forget my dreams! I'll try taking notes like you suggested as soon as I wake up.
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I once had a boss that told me "stop telling people your dreams or else they're going to take you away to the looney bin . . . " Ha!
I never write mine down, though people say I should - I never really write anything down - I let it simmer in the black hole and it'll come out sooner or later in some for or another.
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Kat, I'm sure your dreams would be great fun to read! Just make sure people know it is a dream...
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At times in my life I have thought that I didn't dream, but have since started having very vivid dreams. I have difficulty remembering them, so will have to start taking notes when I wake.
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I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I'll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon.
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