Bringing Order to the Chaos: Dream Within a Dream

Not that long ago, I noticed something about my choice in music. Not the style or the artists but the titles. The most repeated word on my iPod: DREAM.

I have been fascinated with dreams for as long as I can remember. I remember being a small child and having an idea for an invention that could record your dreams and then play them on a TV screen like a movie. Perhaps if I had the mind of an engineer, I may have pursued this invention. I was blessed with the mind of a writer. No, I have not invented a machine that can download your dreams onto a jump drive but I can do something else. I can take an idea that came, seemingly, out of nowhere farther than my brain and I can turn it into a journey for the reader. I can not show readers live footage of the characters in my head, or my dreamworld activities (this might a be a good thing!) I, can, however, illustrate for the reader the ideas in my head and, with any luck, transfer the written transcript of the images in my head to someone else's head with the hopes that you might see what I saw and so much more.

I am currently writing a novel about a young girl who receives an elf figure as a gift from her recently deceased mother. For a period of time, the girl plays with the elf in her dreams. When she wakes, she has trouble discerning if it was actually a dream or at all or perhaps something more. I will admit that writing the dream sequence is a favorite activity even it it does not bear a lot of literary weight. As I see it, we all dream. Many of us remember at least some of our dreams. Others remember them clearly and are even affected by them. If even knew where to start, I would compile a list of all of the books, movies, songs, countless pieces of art and inventions they were the product of a dream. Not a fantasy or a hope but a good old-fashioned dream, created by the chemistry in our brains, our souls, our thoughts, and our memories of this life and those long past.

I cannot make an exhaustive list at this time of all things dreamy but I will include several dream related titles that mean something to me. Maybe they will mean something to someone else or inspire someone to have a new experience.