that the more I immerse myself in my writing the more bizarre and memorable my dreams become.

It’s not that I’m dreaming about my characters or what I’m writing about, I’m not… Rather, I’ve come to believe that working on my writing is strengthening my imagination and it’s using dream time to run wild.

In the past, when I’m stuck I would go lay down and ‘rest’, not really nap, just try to this that in between state, and see if things would jog loose. My theory is that in that in between state, my conscious mind is relaxed enough that it’s not hindering my subconscious from what it needs to do. I’ve used this method to get past several kinds of blocks, from having no clue what to do next to knowing what I need to do, but being unable to make it work.

Night before last I dreamed that my best friend from childhood was kidnapped by terrorists from another country… they demanded ransom from our little league umpire, who was of no relation to either of us. When the ransom wasn’t paid fast enough they started torturing my friend… for some reason he was calling me instead of his family… and then the ransom was paid and they released him… how did I know he was released? Kid Rock was playing on the radio…

Now, I only talk to my friend occasionally, and not in the last few weeks. I haven’t seen my old little league umpire in at least 5 years (I grew up in a small town, we knew every one and were friendly with most,) and I’ve only every heard a few Kid Rock songs.. and I don’t listen to music while I sleep. I have no clue where all of this came from.

Last nights dream was a little less bizarre, I dreamed we were all near a dear friend of my fathers as his time got near and he died of cancer. The eerie part of that is that he really did die of cancer but lived away from all of us and we weren’t there when he died.

What really has me is that I’m remembering the details of them both and I can’t get either out of my mind for more than a very short period of time.. it’s like they’re haunting me.

Anyway, it’s not something that will keep me from writing but it’s an interesting side effect of as much writing as I do.