Friday, October 12, 2012

Ask Elnora--About These Dreams???Lenora Worth

Maybe I'm the only one. But I thought I'd ask and see if anyone else has this happen. Elnora dreams about her characters. And my darling daydreamers, I don't just mean I dream about them. Oh, no. I dream they are literally walking off the pages and following me around. In my dreams, there is this kind of moving sidewalk-merry-go-round type thing and I'm walking on it. I can see my characters alone the way. And every now and then, one of them will hop onto the moving sidewalk with me and start talking. They don't actually talk to me. They talk to each other and I follow them around, listening. It's fun at times and scary at times. Sometimes it's current characters and sometimes it's character from books I've written long ago. These dreams are vivid and full of life. Maybe the moving sidewalk is really the pages of my story, progressing and the characters are moving through those pages. It sure makes for a busy night, let me tell you! Sometimes the characters just walk off the page and disappear. I guess those are the ones who've given me a hard time!
So... is it just me? I'm used to voices in my head during the day, but am I destined to hear them in my sleep, too? I keep thinking of that song by Heart. "These dreams....go on when I close my eyes ... every second of the night I live another life." Do you live another life in your dreams? Do your characters frolic and move through your dreams? Let's discuss our dreams. Do you think writers have vivid dreams because we see words in our heads? And because those voices never seem to go away? What is it about dreams that helps us to be better writers?

11 comments:

  1. No, Lenora, I don't see my characters in my dreams. They do argue with me however. So they do talk to me, not just among themselves. I love this because then I know they are real people--in my mind and within the pages of my story!

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  2. Well, this post explains soooo much about you, my friend. No wonder your characters are so vivid and leap off the pages of your books. Seriously cool!!!!

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  3. Thanks ladies. I might have crazy dreams but talking to my writer friends and my blogger peeps keeps me grounded!!

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  4. I've had dreams that triggered stories, but I usually don't dream about my characters. When I was younger I remembered my dreams more than I do now.

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  5. Very interesting, Lenora. I don't dream about my characters either but I have gone to the store and thought one of them would love whatever it was I was looking at. LOL

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  6. I don't dream about my characters, but I have conversation with them in my car when I'm trying to get an idea as to what should happen next in the story. LOL

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  7. So it seems that our characters do follow us around a lot. In the store, in the car. I've certainly argued with a character while waiting in the doctor's office. Or if I gasp out loud in church, my husband knows I'm working on my plot. I once did that while we were singing "In the Garden" (one of my favorite hymns). My husband said "What's wrong?" I whispered "I just got an idea for three books." Then he grinned and said "Well, keep singing." Thoses books were When Love Comes to Town, Something Beautiful, and Lacey's Retreat. So characters do attend church with me, too!

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  8. LOL, characters attend church with me, too. I was attending church with Carol Cox, another author, and I was thinking about where I could hide a body at her church. That book became Clandestine Cover Up.

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  9. Oh, I love that, Pamela. Big D and I were walking in the park the other day and we smelled what had to have been a dead animal. But I started thinking dead body and wondered how that scene would play out. Drat but characters even bother us when they are dead???

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  10. Hi Elnora:

    I often start off my WIP as I go to sleep and hope the characters will carry on into my sleep state. Usually the characters don’t show up but the effort puts me to sleep very quickly. This is much faster than counting sheep. Yet sometimes I get very good results. This happens when I put the characters in a very dangerous position just to see if they can get out of it. Sometimes they do and they amaze me.

    I think your moving sidewalk is there to make you the ‘other’. Your characters do not want to share their world with you.

    When I was writing advertising copy with killer deadlines some times I would have black and white dreams with just the words scrolling by and I would have to read my own dreams. I always thought this was unfair. Also unfair was that in my dream state I could actually spell! I’ve always planned to write a short story about “The Man Who Had to Read His Dreams”.

    How’s that for weird dreams?

    Vince

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  11. Very interesting, Vince. I am not alone!! I used to work in advertising, too!!

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