I had a dream.... by Alex Marchant
I had a dream...
No, not a Martin Luther King sort of
dream (sadly), just an ordinary sort of one, a few nights ago. But it set me
thinking on a subject I’ve thought about a few times before. The connection
between dreams and the imagination of a writer.
A couple of months ago one of the
questions put to me in an interview about my writing asked, ‘Do you
rely more on dreams, imagination, or planning?’ That was something of a
surprise to me – that ‘dreams’ appeared in that list, let alone at the start.
My answer was that I wouldn’t say I
rely on them, but dreams have fed in to my writing at important times.
Particularly those ‘between sleeping and waking’ types of dreams (one of which
was responsible for my short story ‘The Beast of Middleham Moor’ that led to
the charity anthology Grant Me the Carving of My Name).
On this occasion, the other day, just
before falling asleep I had been reading through some of the submissions
for Right Trusty and Well Beloved..., the follow-up to Grant Me the Carving. All the stories and poems have in some
way been inspired by King Richard III, and many submitted to both collections
have a certain melancholy air (given the huge tragedies he experienced in his
short life). For the first anthology – a result of direct requests to authors I
already knew – I decided to offer a token of balance by including a very short,
but happy extract from my own book The Order of the White Boar (depicting
an Easter egg roll won by Richard and his little son, just before his life
begins to fall apart, also found here). This time, with the submissions
invited in an open competition, a balance should be easier to achieve – but the
matter was obviously to the forefront of my mind as I fell asleep.
I had also spent the day copyediting a
fascinating academic book on North American archaeology. Perhaps it will
therefore come as no surprise that in the small hours of the night I dreamed
about writing a rather magnificent piece of flash fiction – one in which a
group of Native Americans come together to refute, once and for all, William
Shakespeare’s propagandistic portrayal of King Richard as an evil,
child-murdering, hunchbacked tyrant.
 |
| Off to play lacrosse - or to defend Richard III... |
This may seem a rather unlikely
proposition now. But in the wee hours, don’t you ever awake in the middle of a
dream and think ‘that was the best idea ever for a book’? Maybe you lie there,
thinking back over what you can remember – perhaps snatching at those wisps of
the dream before they dissipate into what passes for us as reality. I don’t
imagine I’m the only writer who always has to have a notebook and pen by the
bed to catch those ideas, just in case. Sometimes it may be just part of an
idea, a solution perhaps to an issue that’s been bothering me, rather than a fully
fledged plotline.
This time, I lay there thinking back
through the words I had dreamed, seen written (on parchment was it?) in a
beautiful flowing script. My initial impulse – to switch the light on and grab
my notebook and pen – gradually receded as the words themselves did. And I
finally gave up the notion of trying to grasp them before they disappeared.
Because surely – surely? – they really weren’t that magnificent?
I guess I’ll never actually know.
The memory of dreams fades so quickly – not only at my age (when Sherlock
Holmes’ ‘mind palace’ has, for me, become more like a tiny trinket box where I
can keep only the most precious items), but throughout my life. Is that the
same for everyone? Some dreams may stay with you for a long time – such as the
one when I ‘woke up’ at the noise of an intruder breaking in, only to actually
wake up (gratefully) during the subsequent pursuit by said dreamed intruder
(years before the film ‘Inception’ was made) – but I think most are soon lost.
The one that led to ‘The Beast’ solidified into that short story, another is
still awaiting transfer from the notebook where the idea was scribbled one
night into the bestselling YA science fiction novel of the 2020s (maybe).
What
have been your experiences as either a writer or a reader? Have dreams led to
fiction written? Or has fiction read led to dreams... lived?
Alex is author of two books telling the story of the real King Richard III for children aged 10+, the first set largely in Yorkshire, and editor of Grant Me the Carving of My Name, an anthology of short fiction inspired by the king, sold in support of Scoliosis Association UK (SAUK). A further anthology, Right Trusty and Well Beloved..., is planned for later this year.
Alex's books can be found on Amazon at:
Comments
I'm not sure if a dream has ever inspired an idea. But I do find myself sometimes waking up typically at 4.15am and feeling I have to get up to write 'stuff' down. It can be anything an idea for a poem, non-fiction, a scene from an existing story or a scene for a new one. Then around 5am I'll return to bed and fall back to sleep.