One of the first lectures in my first
Creative Writing class in college was to never write about your dreams. Well at
least if you do write about them, don’t turn them into the class for a critique
and certainly don’t send it as a story to the college literary magazine for
possible publication.
Why?
Well, the professor said because
we don’t always know what our dreams mean, or are aware of the symbolism
because we’re so close to the dream.
I heard, blah blah blah. Because I
was barely 20 years old and I knew everything (sigh, I wish I was still knew
everything).
Here’s how I learned this particular
lesson because I was too arrogant to actually listen to my professor.
I had a story due and had no idea
what to write. I decided to sleep on it. I had this great dream that seemed to
me like some awesome mysterious fable and I knew when I woke up this story was
going to rock the world of my class (I know, I know, keep in mind, I was 20 at
the time). I was pumped, I was energized and I wrote my heart out. It was a
story about secret passages leading to a hidden cavern. The heroin
died by drowning and
every time someone entered the secret passage by canoe she haunted the
cavern with her eerie moans. I’m sure you can see where this is
going.
I turn it in. No one says anything.
Seriously, the lack of a response was disturbing. The professor did reiterate
that it is a bad idea to write out our dreams so literally. I do believe she
sighed afterwards.
They just didn't get it, but surely
the crew at the literary magazine would, so I sent it to them.
When I didn't hear anything, I
just assumed they didn’t get it either.
Because it couldn't have been my
story...my brilliant story.
A few months later I was at a writing
conference and saw a fellow student who also happened to be on the literary
magazine committee. I asked him what was up about my story.
And he asks, “the one with the sexual
imagery?”
A flood of images clouded my mind
turning my cheeks bright red and I realized I just wrote surreal porn and
shared it with my teacher, my fellow students, and the entire committee of the
school’s literary magazine – truly a Freudian nightmare. In this case a canoe
was -- well -- NOT just a canoe.
Not my proudest moment.
Dream journaling can be inspiring; can help you work
things out; and can help you with images as dreams can be amazingly vivid.
Dreams can help in writing and I would never discourage anyone from writing
about them in.your.own.private.journals. But, like my very experienced
and insightful professor from 20 plus years ago, I suggest that’s all you do
and don’t write the dream out verbatim as a story.
