Dreamer

Family and friends are always asking me where my ideas for stories come from, and are shocked when I show them my dream file. I have always been a very vivid, very imaginative dreamer. When I was little, I dreamed I was friends with Freddy Krueger, and he would beat up my bullies and shrink down so I could drive him in a remote control car. I suppose the fact that instead of watching Sesame Street, and instead was watching Nightmare on Elm Street was a good start to my bizarre imagination.

Another fuel to the fire would be my love for reading. My grandmother taught me to read and shared with me her obsession for books, and all my life I have been hopelessly addicted. Before my husband got me my kindle, I had a hard time every year cleaning off my book shelves and taking books I had read that year to the local used bookstore. Luckily, Chris would take the books and give me store credit to purchase more books.

In Jr. High, my taste in books was more towards fantasy, and in High School I came to love paranormal and sci-fy themed books. When my classmates where struggling to do their book reports on 200 page books, I was finding ways to do mine over book series that were published in one book with over 1k pages. My teachers were always impressed with my dedication to books.

After having some incredible reoccurring dreams, and after reading several books that left me thinking "I could have wrote better", I finally started writing. At first, I wrote my dreams on any piece of paper that was near me when I woke up, but soon I needed a better way to file these little treasures. Now if I wake in the middle of the night, I grab my laptop, which is always by my bedside when I go to bed, and file the dreams in a file called Novel Ideas. When I get up the next morning, the file is copied to my USB for safer storage.

That is where all of my story ideas are drawn from. My current WIP started from a dream, and has been built around other dreams that I have had since the first one that had started it all.

Where do you draw your story ideas from? Are you one to remember your dreams, and if so what are the most reoccurring themes in your dreams? Do you have dreams that haunt you long after you wake up? If so, put those dreams to work for you. You may have a bestseller just waiting to be shared!

Ta!

A.McBay