Friday, October 30, 2009

Surprise?!?

I dreamed night before last.

I rarely dream. And when I do it's a confused jumble of this and that. But strangely enough this dream was quite clear and coherent. It was about my current vampire story, but the characters' positions in the story were completely different.

When I woke up the dream was still there, complete and orderly, prompting me to go have a long look at my work in progress. There I discovered a startling truth. The dream was correct. So I spent the entire day yesterday revising the story.

Not that there was much to revise, after all. But when you make changes (or anticipate making changes) you need to start at the first page and read through, revising as you go. In the first three chapters revisions were minimal which just goes to show that my subconscious already knew the story was wrong. The rest of me had to catch up.

When I really, really get involved with my story, I tend to block out my surroundings. There's no one home during the day except house hunk two (son-in-law) and me. He keeps busy taking care of the house, doing the shopping, laundry, and cooking. I burrow in my office pounding on the keyboard. The house is QUIET.

I had my nose near the monitor screen trying to figure out what something was on a blurry photo when HH2 came to see if I needed more coffee. Um...I jumped about a foot. Talk about heart palpitations!

Heh. After that, he'd call out, "Mom?" before he reached the door.

Funny how we can be so enthralled by something we don't hear or see or notice anything around us. I used to write with kids running in and out, yelling and wrestling, the dog barking and the phone ringing. Huh. I wonder what happened?

I think my "blocking" mechanism wore out. Or is it that we don't multi-task as well when we're older? Maybe it's just that I get more sleep now so I'm more alert than I used to be. I suspect back then I lived life in a foggy haze.

Hmmm. Maybe I drink too much coffee.

anny

4 comments:

  1. I think we multi-task just fine. I suspect that we've just gotten so good at tuning the world out while we create our stories that we might not realize what's going on around us.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was so engrossed in my own little world a few months ago, I didn't realize the family walked out the door without me. The slamming of the door brought me out of it. Thankfully, they DID bring me home a take-home bag:)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I suspect you could get back in that habit if you HAD to. You're just dealing with what you've grown used to.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I swear. I know what you mean about the 'jumping out of your skin' thing. When I write, it's very easy for me to be startled to the point of heart palpitations.

    BTW...I dreamed of puppies. Lots and lots of puppies. One of them was pink and had bright red bows in it's hair. Wonder what the HELL that means?

    ReplyDelete