Dream Sequence

[dr_pretentious]

While working on the Nanowrimo ms, I refused to indulge in the word count boosting gimmick of inserting dream sequences. I did, however, have a dream about Nanowrimo that amused me.

I dreamed I was driving at high speed down the New Jersey Turnpike, only it was some awful nightmare version of the Turnpike, more like the Rock Creek Roller Coaster stretch of the Washington Beltway--all sudden dips and swerves, and the turns all graded wrong. I was desperately sleep-deprived and could barely keep my eyes open. Despite my insistent signaling that I needed to pull over, the other cars on the highway kept speeding along and pinned me into the left lane, where there was no shoulder. Finally, I couldn't keep my eyes open one more minute--is there anything more confusing to the sleeping mind than to dream of being sleep deprived and then of falling asleep?--and crashed thunderously into the concrete median barrier. Next thing I knew, I was at a party, saying to all my friends, Wasn't I just in a deadly car wreck? Am I all right? How is it possible nobody was killed? Won't Dan will be furious that I've totaled the car? Etc. But there was only minor fender damage.

When I woke up, my first thought was that this was a cautionary tale about sleep deprivation, and my unconscious mind was telling me to be careful on the road. It took me half an hour to clear my head enough to make the obvious interpretive connections.

Not as good as the dream of the University of Antarctica, and nowhere near as good as the dream of finding a secret door to Beltresa in the basement of my parents' house, but still, very vivid.

Comments

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Oh, sweetie! I've gone and done it again. I've been a jerk online without meaning too. I'm sorry.

The big mistake I made with Nanowrimo is that I kept trying to use it to do something else, which meant there were a whole lot of legitimate plays in the game that I couldn't use. I probably had less fun playing than anybody else who finished did (even if it was still approximately a million times more fun than writing my dissertation was). Doing Nanowrimo to kick off a novel I'd been planning for 14 years was like pausing in the middle of a century marathon for a bout of speed skating. I'm a century marathoner, as a writer, and I couldn't get my head out of the kind of game I play best.

Again and again, I saw people talking online about the various word count gimmicks they were using, and while I admired their ingenuity and shamelessness, I couldn't bring myself to do those things with this book.

If I ever do Nanowrimo again, it will be to play, just play, and nothing but play, with a project I haven't been daydreaming about for 14 years, such that I'll be free to throw in Bob Dylan lyrics, the Brooklyn phone directory, and a few Chinese take-out menus, if I want to.

And if you look in the most polished parts of the most polished draft of the big book, you'll find, I think, three or four short dream sequences. Some projects call for them. The one you're writing does, even if it doesn't need the particular ones you wrote.

Am I digging myself in deeper? Could someone pass me a shovel? Where are the keys to the backhoe?

[shakti-lemaris.livejournal.com]

Honey, it was totally a joke. I thought you'd be amused. Whoops.

[shakti-lemaris.livejournal.com]

And now I'm going to include some dream sequences.

[shakti-lemaris.livejournal.com]

Also, I've discovered (for me) that the price of "playing" during Nanowrimo is lots and lots of backspace button-pushing later. Still, no regrets, because the weirdness generated some good stuff as well.