Random thoughts about dreams and writers by Sandra Horn
The poet M R peacock has talked about the creative process as arising from that part of the brain where dreams are made, and she suggested that calm and quietness are prerequisites for both. That seems to me more like day-dreaming than the dreams that come in sleep: day-dreams, the slipping of a cog in the brain towards unfocussedness, letting thoughts drift as they will. I’ve found that story or poetry ideas sometimes float through in that pleasant, what-looks-like-idle, state. They may just be fragments that float off again and never make it into wholeness, but occasionally they grow and settle into something worth working on. My children’s story Goose Anna came from that out-of-focus state on a long motorway drive (I was a passenger, I hasten to add) with a soft-toy goose on the back seat, and picture book The Crows’ Nest formed from a chilled-out evening (with wine) in a friend’s garden, half-listening to crows gossiping in nearby trees. Days out in the wi...