So it’s no secret that I have crazy, wild, and totally inappropriate dreams. These dreams in themselves are amazing story fodder: I know, when I was in fifth grade I wrote a compilation of all the interesting dreams I had up until that time. I even had sex dreams starting back when I was eleven or so. (Such an early bloomer I was.) However, my dreams never quite impacted my writing life so much as they did back in spring 2007 when I went to sleep and dreamed what would become the entire plot outline for the first CROSS// installment. The dream itself wasn’t so engrossing: I dreamed that I was watching it like a movie that my family rented. However, I was entirely unable to get the dream out of my head for a whole day, like it was haunting me, and finally I ended up drawing out a book outline and, after testing out a first scene, put it on the backburner until that following November when I decided to use CROSS// as my first NaNoWriMo experiment. It worked, and now I have a series I am very proud of.

…And now here comes the segue.

I had another dream last night. Particularly about one of my novels, that takes place where I am writing it right now. I really liked what the dream insinuated…basically a very bashful first kiss between two prominent characters. IT was very lovely and I could very well find a way to fit it into the story, but the problem is…would it really be necessary? Without giving too much away, having those characters kiss NOW would be detrimental to their relationship in subsequent plots. This is where I have to make a decision: either use it as is, or get SUPER CREATIVE and find a way to make it work with an insignificant kiss.

Dreams do that to you, though. While one may argue that dreams are a reflection of your subconscious, I would also argue that dreaming is a creative outlet. How many stories would not exist today without dreams? I’ve even had people come up to me and share their dreams with me because they think it would make an interesting story and they don’t want to write it…not that I have yet to do anything like that, but I always find it interesting that other people have dreams too that they absolutely feel need to be told to everyone as a novel. Maybe it’s our mind telling us “Here, you have this amazing idea, but you’re too daft to see it yourself: now get it on it.”

And with that, I’m off to use the remainder of my evening trying to fit and impromptu “first kiss” into my novel. Wish me luck?