Witch Dreams

Morning, Reader!

This is going to be a quick post as I stayed up late working on freelance stuff, then slept in, and am headed to the bookstore for the rest of the day (and coffee first is ESSENTIAL).

However, I had a dream this morning and I wanted to share. Imagine you curled up beside me--in a totally platonic, friendly sort of way. You are half asleep. Then suddenly you sense something. Me. You open your eyes and realize I am staring at you.

"I had a weird dream," I say.

Welcome to Curt's life.

So, in my dream Curt and I were on a journey. Possibly a quest. Two powerful beings were monitoring our progress and hindering us but never outright trying to stop us. We walked up a steep path and a large, teetering Victorian house came into view.

There was a woman waiting for us. She looked like Helena Bonham Carter (I just saw Harry Potter, the last). She takes us inside and separates us. Then she seduces me and cuts off my hair. Now, she says, I'm under her power. She will always know where I am. The longer I stay with her, the uglier she gets. Soon I realize that she has a beard and several chins. I keep trying to escape and she keeps stopping me. It's a game to her. I don't know where Curt is.

Finally, I realize that if I close a particular door on her and say something--alas, the dream kept that information from me, so I can't tell you what the magic words were--I could slip away. It works! I tear through the giant house, looking for Curt. I find him stuffed in a room barely big enough for him--a box with a tiny door.

He tries to hug me. He is confused and lonely. I push past him and open a window. I pull myself through, then him. Once outside, we're both free of our respective spells.

The witch pursues us but her power over us is gone. The two beings who watch our progress our sitting on the lawn drinking lemonade. They say nothing as we run up the path and away.

Just as we've crested the hill, just before the house drops out of sight, our two Watchers turn us into some sort of raccoon/ badger animal. We keep running. They laugh. Clink glasses.

I wake up.

Stuff and Nonsense

First of all, have you heard the latest casting news about The Hunger Games?I like their choice for Peeta (left) and I can sort of see Gale (right), and I'm still not sure about Katniss (middle). But the people who are most important to me are Rue and Haymitch and Cinna. What about you?

I won't be doing much writing this week, unfortunately. I have a lot of work to do on my freelance project to meet an unexpected deadline. I'm also subbing an extra kickboxing class and some other things that will keep me busy. TCB will have to wait, and I hope it's better for having stewed in my brain a bit. Friday night I think I have a date with my manuscript.

It occurs to me that if I keep writing on Friday nights and Saturdays, maybe I should look into sexing up my work a bit, you know, to keep it interesting for me.

....

Right. First I'll work on having my protagonists share a Real! Live! Kiss! and not just an almost kiss. Baby steps.

I went home to Connecticut last weekend and dug up my end-of-semester summaries from my writing professors. THAT was a good reminder of how far I've come. There was a lot of, (I'm interpreting here) "You know how to make your writing sound like a story but the story itself isn't really there."

I also found evidence of the feud I had with the Head of the English Department, my poetry professor and a man I still love to hate. I wrote a poem in iambic tetrameter which was about finding meaning in life and overcoming thoughts of suicide and he made fun of it in front of the entire workshop. He was one of those people who thought if you hadn't read contemporary American White male authors then you have no clue what you're doing.

But I digress.

Last night I had more weird dreams. I've been having a lot of them lately. Last night's involved a trip to Japan where everything was sheathed in snow and ice. Holly Black was there, running a dumpling cart. The dumplings were expensive but I couldn't resist ordering one for me and Husband. I love Holly Black. I love dumplings. Win-Win, right? All I remember about the rest of it was that Husband was late, the dumplings took forever, and I attempted to make a joke to Holly, which fell flat. She just sort of looked at me for a moment and then went back to her dumplings. Since I've met Holly, I found this whole thing hilarious.

It's raining here in Vermont--a noted improvement from snow!

[Photos: GettyImages/WENN]

Snow and Dreams

Hey, news flash: It's snowing again. You know, because it's Tuesday. And on Tuesdays, it snows. This is getting a little old. I like to walk to the elementary school for my reading with Ryan the fifth grader on Tuesdays but now it looks like I'll have to take the car. If only the sun came out after these storms, but the sun gets really coy in Vermont during the winter. I have yet to figure out why and where she goes.

I had a dream last night about the Sirens Conference. In the dream, I was going to give a presentation. A group of about thirty people gathered in a room for tea and so that people like me could give short presentations. They said I should go first. I sat down at the table up front and just sat there, staring at my paper. I don't know if I was scared or asleep or what. I just...zoned out. And then suddenly I realized where I was and I floundered, started to talk. That's when Janni Lee Simner gently but firmly told me that my time was up and I'd have to go back to my seat because other people were waiting to present. So I very politely stood up and thanked them and excused myself before I could start crying.

This is funny for a couple reasons:
1. Sirens is in OCTOBER and I'm apparently already getting nervous about the possibility of giving a presentation, which I've been thinking about doing. That means I'm nervous about eight months in advance. Who says I don't plan ahead?

2. I love that Janni Lee Simner was there. I didn't get the chance to speak with her at Sirens last year, but her book Bones of Faerie (first in a trilogy) is on my to-read list and looks fascinating. Also, based on what I observed about Janni from afar at the conference, I don't think she's the type of person to ask me to leave quietly. I bet she would have given me about a minute of silence in my presentation before clearing her throat and shouting something encouraging to wake me up!

So apparently my subconscious wants me to stop procrastinating and start working on my presentation. Point taken. Yeesh!

Monday Monday

Sooo in less than interesting news, I've been waking up at 4:30 or 5:30 AM every morning. Then I lie awake for about an hour before finally falling back asleep, during which time I have very scary nightmares. These have included z bombs or zombie bombs that do just what you'd think, and also cleavers. I don't think my mind really knows how hard it would be to chop through a person's sternum because it felt very easy and very upsetting in the dream. *shudder* So yeah, that's whats new with me.

If you too are having a groggy Monday, let this video cheer you up. It always makes me laugh. Sound is necessary so beware if you're at work.

Fever Dreams

It's really hot today. Really really hot. If my husband had not installed an AC unit in our computer room I could very well be dead right now. (Oh yes.)

The heat is giving me weird dreams. Last night's was so odd I was almost going to keep it to myself but everyone who knows me knows how bad I am at keeping my dreams to myself. I love to share them, even the nonsensical ones and the ones in which I die or the ones in which someone is trying to kill me and my husband runs away and leaves me to die. (It's because he runs faster than me so he goes to get help. My husband gets very upset when I tell him about these dreams.)

Last night's dream was about the end of the world...or humanity. Or something. Basically, all humans were leaving and it was decided that I had to stay in a big science fiction space station to shut everything down and launch the Earth shuttle so everyone could leave. I had to stay behind. Before everyone left they decided to organize a talent show. You would think that I would be the audience but no, I had to participate. And most of my dream revolved around my fear that I had never learned the dance I was supposed to perform.

(I took dance classes from childhood through college and I often have dreams wherein I have to perform but forget the steps. This never happened in real life.)

After the talent show, people started to leave. The one person left was Billy Dee Williams. Yes, that Billy Dee as in Lando Calrissian. He looked the same as he did in Cloud City, which is good because if he was his current age of 72 in my dream the age difference would have been a little icky. Anyway, Billy felt bad for me and so he decided to send me off with some sexy time. This is where the dream got weird. In my defense, Billy was very charming in The Empire Strikes Back. I mean, he almost wooed Leia right from under Han Solo's nose! But don't worry, my parents stopped by at the end to say goodbye so I just got hugs from everyone including Billy Dee. Then they left me all alone to die by myself while the rest of humanity went on their merry way.

The end.

Extreme heat+staying home all the time to write+revising+self doubt=me going crazy.

Sometimes My Story Ideas Are Just Too Good for Me

The weather has been unbearably heavy, hot, and humid in New England the last couple of days. I'll try not to complain because at least this is to be expected in August, unlike the cool, rainy weather we've had for most of the summer. Still, the weather makes it hard to sleep since I don't have air conditioning, and this results in my dreams being even weirder than usual.

The other night I had a very complicated dream. Why is it that the ones that seem so complex and interesting while you're asleep are so dull and simple when you wake up?

This particular dream was about a village (I think?) that was attacked and destroyed by a mysterious force (Evil Lord? Bomb? Uncontrollable Fire? I leave this threat up to you to choose as you see fit). The sole survivor of the tragedy was a rat.

Yes, a rat. This may be my first rat dream. I've had lots and lots of death dreams and uncontrollable car dreams and spider dreams but rare is the dream about rodents. Go figure.

There is some sort of explosion in the church where the rat makes its meager living. The rat is thrown into water (perhaps the baptismal font?) and survives but does not know what caused the blast. When he surfaces, the threat is gone and the village destroyed. He then goes on a quest through various cities throughout Europe. I don't know if this is because he is seeking revenge or simply seeking the meaning of life. Again, open to interpretation.

This is the best part. As I was waking, I remember clearly thinking to myself how this would make a fantastic story (I'm sure I don't need to elaborate on why. The many merits are, by now, obvious.) "But only Neil Gaiman could do the story justice," I told myself.

HA!

I don't know if I meant that only Neil Gaiman could salvage this wreck of a story and somehow spin it into literary magic, or that the high concept required Neil's deft hand. Perhaps I meant both. Either way I'm sure Neil will be glad to know that I'm cultivating story ideas for him in my sleep.

A Stephen King Sort of Day

This morning I woke up and felt like I'd been dropped into the pages of a Stephen King novel. The air is still, as if the wind is holding its breath. There's a gray sheath wrapped around everything, muffling sound. I find myself banging the dirty dishes and slamming cabinets just to fill the emptiness.

Out of the corner of my eye I keep catching a glimpse of a tall, dark figure. I spin around and it's only my husband's dresser. Wait! I spin again and it's just the vacuum cleaner I left out the night before. Still, I can't help feeling like I'm being watched. I scurry out to the sidewalk to drop off my recycling and slip back into the house again. The street is empty and quiet.

Now, at last, rain is falling. This is a good day for writing about the Fix.

That dream I had this morning about the giant sea horses that crawled out of the ocean (a bit like alligators) and began eating everyone, probably didn't help my mood. Trust me, those things were terrifying.

So, picking up where I left off, I had a dream and it showed me where I needed to go with the novel and how the main character Maggie actually finds her way into Gloaming--she's chased by a Fixer.

I went back to work. I had to start over. I kept the faerie city and I kept some characters but other than that I started from scratch. It was scary and it was sad to bury that book. But it wasn't good enough. The dream I'd had kept me going. I finished the second draft the following Christmas.

Now I'm revising. It's different. It's slower and every word feels like it's heavier to lift onto the page. I'm hoping to finish in a few weeks ("finish" I should say--of course it will never be finished). We'll see.