Stephen King, in his book, ‘On Writing,’ describes how emerging from a writing session feels like waking from a dream. Everyone who writes will have had that experience of being in ‘the writer’s trance,’ so absorbed in the world of the story that the real world fades clean away.
If someone phones me when I’m in the middle of writing, I find it hard to follow the conversation because my mind is in a different mode. The creative mind is relaxed, receptive, inwardly-focused, whereas the day-mind looks outward, rapidly assessing events according to the evidence of the senses and rational thought.
As writers, we have to be able to immerse ourselves in the inner world, whatever the pull of the world outside, with all its demands and distractions.
Establishing regular dream recalling and recording is wonderful practice for this, in that it also requires us to hold the middle ground between fact and fantasy, not allowing the dayworld to sweep the story away before we are ready.
Jenny Alexander's blog: Writing in the House of Dreams 
This is very true. And sometimes it can be a bit frightening just how “real” a story world could be for a writer of fiction. It’s not easy to pull ourselves out of that but, at the same time, this does allow us to write our stories better. Thank you for posting about this. 🙂
That’s so true, Dawn. My friend Kath Langrish likened it to swimming under water, in response to this post. Intense, exhilarating, but something many of us can only do it in short bursts.
My recently published novel, The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story, came into existence as the result of a dream. See http:saintofflorenville.wordpress.com . . . main page post. I’d be happy to share with your readers.
Hi Alfred – thank you for your comment. I’ve replied via linkedin with guest blog specs…
I used to slip into the writer’s trance rather easily when I was a child but now I find it harder to get to that state.
Hi Sehena – this is such a timely comment for me today because I’m redrafting the opening chapter of my book, which is about how easily we slip between the inner and outer worlds as children, and one way of re-establishing the connection is by imagining yourself back into the child you were through writing