Last night before bed I read Decalogue for a Young Writer by Carlos Fuentes
But if this is the logical part of literary creation, there is another, both mysterious and unfathomable, that I do not relate to the vagueness of inspiration, a word often used as a pretext for postponing work while waiting for Godot–something, in olden days, called The Muses.
That mysterious part of creativity is dreaming.
I can plan, the night before, the next morning’s work and go to bed peacefully though impatient to get up and renew my writing. But when I sit down the next morning, the plan outlined by my literary logic goes off on a tangent, suffers too many exceptions, and is invaded by the totally unforseen.
What has happened?
It happens that I have dreamed. And it so happens that the dreams I remember are repetitive, commonplace, and useless. I cannot but think, then, that the creative hand that is guiding my own the next morning is the hand of the dreams that I do not remember, dreams doing their invisible chore: displacing, condensing, re-elaborating, and anticipating, in the dreamwork, the literary work.
One might simply regard dreams as natural sensed phenomena, in which case the same rules apply for dream-writing as for anything else.
Nicholas Virgilio put forth the following advice for writers:
- Always carry a notebook. Jot down notes on natural phenomena . . . human and non-human: experiences, things, plants, animals–anything that strikes you poetically, or simply interest you.
- Compose every day:
- Construct a word sketch, with respect to pictoral perspective; whenever possible, place the most promient object first; always try to present a clear picture.
- With real and imagined experience as raw material utilize all your powers: fancy, imagination, logic, intuition, memory, etc.
- Experiment: use a new or borrowed technique in all possible ways, with all manner of material and expeirenc euntil your own style comes into the fore. Remember, even originality is relative; you build on what has gone before you.
I think this is good advice. It seems that a distinction can be safely made depending on the writer’s ability to manage the content of dreams in a way that fits with waking life, since most of us do the majority of our reading awake.
Masaoka Shiki said: “Use both imaginary pictures and real ones, but prefer the real ones. If you use imaginary pictures, you can get both good and bad haiku, but the good ones will be very rare.”
What do you think? Post your comment below.
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I write down dreams all the time. I always have the urge to because I feel they are fleeting and therefore important. It only stays with you for a few minutes after waking, sometimes even seconds.
I write down dreams all the time. I always have the urge to because I feel they are fleeting and therefore important. It only stays with you for a few minutes after waking, sometimes even seconds.
I always make the effort as well. It’s easy to just wake up and begin the day without stopping to realize where I just was. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Our ability to be attentive to a certain mode of being (dreaming) and then to suddenly be in a different mode (waking life). That in-between state passes quickly. I’ve read several accounts of people experiencing things during their dreams where they figure out a difficult problem. It’s awesome to remember that the brain never stops, and that during sleep one of its key activities is to form patterns from the day’s events.
I remember having some pretty incredible dream-experiences shortly after reading through this book by Carlos Castaneda:
The Art of Dreaming. It’s sometimes difficult to read Castaneda because you want to just say to him “Yes! Yes! Just believe what Don Juan is saying already! Stop asking so many questions!” though I found this book to be fascinating.
It may be an example where a book gives a reader a complex experience so they can work out the patterns on their own. It may also be that through the experience of reading about dreams, the reader’s concept of dreaming is enlarged, and they come to intend more from their own dreams. It was interesting to read through the experiences in the book and respond to his questions to Don Juan about the strange descriptions of dreaming.