Had a wonderful, relaxing Christmas—and now three nights of sleep. Blissful, lovely, sleep. I can honestly say that for the two weeks preceding, I hardly got any shut-eye. Too much work. But, you know, weird things start happening when you stay up too long. In my case, I began writing dreams into my books. Literally.
This has happened before. I’ll be up, pushing myself—half-falling asleep as I write—and as I doze and work at the same time (like a person drifting off at the wheel), I begin to dream.
It’s a desperate kind of dreaming, as though my brain is so starved for REM sleep, it snatches it when it can. And yet, there’s another part of me that is still typing away. So as this is going on, I unconsciously place lines from those brief dreams into whatever story I’m working on. And I don’t realize it until later, when I’m rereading.
Here’s one section where that happened recently (and please forgive the unedited awkward phrasing):
“She was no expert in kissing, having only experienced the sensation in her dream of the night before, but even that had been much better than this pressing of lips, which most certainly served a purpose beyond preparing one�s soul for the afterlife.”
I was lucky. I reread that section soon after it was written, and was alert enough at that point to go, “Huh?” In a way, the underlined sentence makes an odd sense, but it doesn’t fit the context of the story. Of course, it just so happened that I remembered the dream I was having in that moment. It was the pulpit scene in Footloose.
Dudes, whatever. My brain has a mind of its own. So to speak.
***
This is adorable! Doggie Shoplifter!
Also, though it might seem odd to some, I find this one of the most uplifting essays on life that I’ve read in quite some time: Oliver Morton’s Not-So-Lonely Planet.
Finally, a little known fact: I LOVE TOM JONES. It’s not the kind of love that would compel me to throw my panties at him while he’s on stage in Las Vegas at the MGM (which he was, years ago, looking superfine and sounding even better than some ditzy recording can reproduce) but my appreciation is nonetheless strong and mighty.