My favourite chapter in Patricia Garfield’s ground-breaking book, ‘Creative Dreaming,’ is the one about the Senoi dreamers, whose dream-practice is designed ‘to make life better.’
My 1976 copy of the very wonderful ‘Creative Dreaming’
In this tradition, if you have an unhappy or disturbing dream, you create a happy outcome for it, either by going back to sleep and dreaming it on, or through creative visualisation when awake.
If every time you have a bad dream you bring it to a satisfying resolution, soon your dreaming mind will start to follow the pattern you have consciously created, and difficult dream situations will always be resolved within the dream.
This practice doesn’t only make your dreamlife happier, it makes your waking life better too, because it works as a kind of rehearsal, an empowering opportunity to experience yourself as someone who confronts their fears and finds their courage and ingenuity in difficult situations.
One of my most common nightmares when I was younger was fear of falling from high places, and that fear was reflected in my waking life. First, I learnt to handle it in my dreams and then, building on that imaginative experience, in my waking life, so that nowadays I love the exhilaration of pushing through the fear to reach the heights.
Up high in Prague last month – hello, Pat!
This is exactly what we do when we write fiction. We put our characters in difficult situations and imagine them forward to a place of resolution. These fictional situations emerge, like dreams, from our deep unconscious, and like the Senoi dreamers, we transform them in imagination in order to triumph over them.
Has your dreaming or writing ever helped you to face a deep fear and feel empowered?
Big thanks today to Wyndy Dee for nominating Writing in the House of Dreams for the Super Sweet Blogging Award. How gorgeous! More about Wyndy here http://wyndydee.wordpress.com/about/
The rules: Thank (and link) the person who Awarded it to you (see above!) Nominate 12 people and ask them these simple questions…here they are, with my answers.
Cookies or Cake? Whichever is the most chocolatey (obviously!)
Chocolate or Vanilla? A marriage made in heaven – both at once is best
Favorite Sweet Treat? Rhubarb crumble and Cornish clotted cream
When do you crave sweet things the most? At emotional extremes – when I feel either on top of the world or down in the dumps
Sweet Nick Name? I wish I had one. Today in the Rocky Valley tearooms near Tintagel, the waitress kept calling me honey, and I thought that was nice
Now then, my own nominees for the Super Sweet Award…
This time, I’m going for family and children’s-writer friends – I wish they could all come for cake in the House of Dreams!
Rosie Alexander‘Adviser on the Edge’ – my daughter, blogging about life and work from her home in Orkney
Carolyn Hughes is a writer with an interest in addiction and mental health issues. Her popular blog is The Hurt Healer and she has a lively and rapidly growing following on facebook and twitter
Carolyn Hughes
I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole ~ Jung
Like many writers I want my work to be recognisable by its unique and individual style. For me, it’s crucial that what and how I write reflects my authentic self. Anyone who has read my blog The Hurt Healer will be familiar with the fact that I share from the heart. It’s a deliberate approach to enable readers to relate to and hopefully be encouraged by my words. Authenticity means being genuine and real. Much as I would love to reveal only my good side, to be true to my work I have to disclose my whole self.
It is no coincidence that I am only now finding my writing voice as it has taken a long time to find myself. Years of battling with depression and alcoholism meant that I had very little idea of who I was. How I presented to the outside world was very different to how I felt inside. It was only through having the courage to challenge my past at every level that I was able to start the journey to healing and so begin to find personal identity and my authentic self.
My aim though isn’t just to be authentic, but to be authentically creative. And the key to writing both authentically and creatively lies with the unconscious. For me the unconscious is a limitless place in my mind where my spirit and soul meet. It is a place where I can visit those painful issues that used to torment me. But instead of being overwhelmed I can now bring them into my conscious, safe from their power to harm me. So as I communicate from my unconscious, so I hope to reach the unconscious of others and in doing so share a collective moment of authenticity.
The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind ~ Freud
Recently I’ve been looking at how I can reach further into the depths of my unconscious and take my writing to a new level of creativity. I’ve started to look at the constituents of my dreams. This is a wonderful way to tap into those hidden thoughts and images that make up the psyche, as well as exposing my inner truth.
Examining my dreams however has only been possible from a position of emotional recovery and psychological stability. In those dark days of depression and alcoholism my night-time experiences were fraught with darkness and fear. The erratic and terrifying nightmares that emerged reflected my complete inability at the time to manage my physical and mental anguish.
Jung once remarked that nothing was ever lost in the psyche. That is an horrendous thought for anyone who has tried to block out the past in the hope that the pain would stop. The idea that all thoughts, memories and emotions never disappear but remain forever can be frightening. Yet I found that there was indeed a freedom to be found in allowing the unconscious to simply ‘ be’. I stopped fighting the emergence of the dark side and celebrated the arrival of the good side. By no longer fearing my thoughts and dreams I was free to live authentically and to write openly too.
Il ne faut jamais regarder quelqu’un qui dort. C’est comme si on ouvrait une lettre qui ne vous est pas addressee ~ Sacha Guitry
I couldn’t mention dreams without including one of my favourite quotes. A general translation of this is; “You should never look at someone who is sleeping. It is like opening a letter that isn’t addressed to you.”
It is a quote I came across many years ago at a time when I was experiencing my first love. After one of those deep conversations that you have in such relationships I remember feeling that he hadn’t been entirely truthful. As I watched him sleeping I remembered the quote and realised that I had been right to doubt him. His real emotions were disclosed on his face as he slept. So dreams aren’t just for the benefit of the dreamer!
Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy ~ Freud
Being new to noting my dreams, I must admit that at first they did appear to be made up of bizarre representations that made little sense and made no contribution to my creativity. But as I made more of a conscious effort to remember them and to focus on not just what they were about but how I felt, they became significant.
Very often it’s in that winding down time between waking and sleeping that a word, phrase, image that comes into my mind and gives the essence to a piece of writing. Other times it’s a complete dream that a memory from the past, an issue of the present or an aspiration for the future.
Sometimes this works better than others depending on the obscurity or relevance of my dreams. Yet the importance lies in allowing that writing to happen regardless of whether it makes sense at the time. So although I may have rearranged the words to make them flow, I haven’t messed with the essence of what my soul may have whispered to me.
I may never reach the purest form of authenticity or be famed for my creativity, but I will continue to write from the heart with my unconscious and dreams as my guides.
It’s eighteen years since my first few books were published and I’ve had a very varied and productive writing career ever since. I’ve also got to know lots of other authors, at various stages in their careers; I’ve been on many workshops and read many books about the art and craft of writing.
Books, poems, magazine articles… my varied writing life
Although I’ve experienced occasional bouts of frustration, stress and despondency over the years in relation to the business side of things, I’ve always felt happy and confident in my writing, and I think that’s largely down to finding and following my five golden rules:
Focus on the big picture
The real work-in-progress is yourself as a writer – every word, draft and manuscript you produce contributes to that. Therefore even if a piece of work is turned down by publishers or agents, that doesn’t mean it’s been a waste of time, because it’s added to the sum of your writing experience. (In fact, rejected MSS will often go on to have their day – they’re eminently recyclable)
Don’t push the river
Creative work has its own rhythm, requiring fallow time as well as pondering, planning, drafting and redrafting. If you try to write a book before it’s ready, you’ll come up against blocks and difficulties; if you learn to be patient, and allow the ideas to fully form up in your mind before you begin, the writing will flow.
Go with the flow
Don’t expect to please everyone
We’re all different, so we all enjoy different themes and voices in our reading, and that includes publishers and agents. If you get rejections, take notice of constructive criticism but don’t take it personally. Ditto if you get bad reviews.
Understand your soul’s needs
Some people want to write because they have a burning desire to tell their own personal story, or to achieve celebrity, or to become a public speaker. Some people hope to earn a lot of money. Others may simply want to be able to create objects that please them. Identifying what you want from being a writer will help you to create achievable goals and lasting satisfaction. I’ve written about this on the blog, in What kind of writer do you want to be?
Life-coaching techniques could help you to identify your writing goals
Be grateful
As soon as you start to write, whether you are published or not, you begin to see life through a writer’s eyes. You notice everything. Snippets of overheard conversations; the story in a stranger’s face; the movement of light in leaves. You uncover the unconscious narrative streams that flow in your own psyche, and so magnify your experience of everyday life.
The story in a stranger’s face
These are the rules which have underpinned the whole of my writing life. What are your writing rules?
Just across the road from where I live, there’s a piece of woodland where I often walk. This morning, when I reached the stile, I found warning notices that tree-felling was in progress, to clear diseased trees.
Warning notices
I was shocked when I saw the extent of the devastation, a long section of beautiful woodland around the path reduced to an ugly scar.
Where once were tall majestic trees
Something about the angle of the felled tree trunks reminded me of the Tower card in tarot, and that made me feel better.
XVI – The Tower – ‘Thunderbolt’ in the Osho Zen Tarot
The card traditionally shows a tower being burned, destroyed or blown apart, with figures tumbling from the top. Angeles Arrien, my favourite tarot commentator, says, ‘Because this card looks so violent, it has often been misinterpreted.’ She says the Tower is actually ‘the universal principle of healing, renovation and restoration.’
I’ve been experiencing the Tower lately in my writing, with a story I wrote and submitted over a decade ago. Back then, it went as far as acquisitions with several publishers and was only rejected on grounds that they had already taken on new books on similar themes.
So coming back to it, I knew the book was of publishable standard, and I wasn’t planning to do anything radical, just prepare the text for kindle. But on re-reading, I had a strong sense that I could write the whole thing better now, after this long delay of time.
I copied the file and started chopping out the dead wood and carving up the action; then I started all over again, strengthening the voice, deepening the characters and restructuring the plot.
For a while, I wondered whether I was actually just destroying a perfectly good story, but what’s grown from the wreckage is a far fresher, stronger and more satisfying novel.
Hopefully the woodland near my house will soon begin its own regeneration.
Have you ever had to ‘kill your darlings’ as a writer? Or been through a Tower time, when things have fallen apart but ultimately made way for something better?
The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously — that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion — while separating it sharply from reality ~ Sigmund Freud
Over the years, several people coming new to writing workshops have remarked that they feel like they’re in playschool, when they had been expecting something much more difficult and demanding. ‘It’s very enjoyable,’ they say, ‘but when are we going to get to the nitty gritty?’
The ability to be playful is the nitty gritty – it’s the key to creating the dreamlike fantasies of fiction, and it’s an ability that many of us lose as part of the natural process of growing up and engaging with the ‘real’ world.
Freud says we actually distance ourselves from the fantasies of our inner lives to the extent of feeling fearful and ashamed. The writer’s gift may be that in being able to sustain the playful attention and emotional attachment that children do to their dreams and fantasies, he or she provides an acceptable way for readers to indulge in the same activity vicariously.
And there’s more.
…our actual enjoyment of an imaginative work proceeds from a liberation of tensions in our minds. It may even be that not a little of this effect is due to the writer’s enabling us thenceforward to enjoy our own day-dreams without self-reproach or shame ~ Sigmund Freud
In overcoming their ‘grown-up’ rejection of the dreams and fantasies of their inner world, writers may also be giving a kind of permission for readers to explore and engage with their own.
People often ask me for writing advice, and they’re surprised when the first thing I tell them is to keep a dream journal… keeping a dream journal is perfectly sound, if neglected, writing advice ~Andrew Blackman on writetodone
This extract is from a blog post I read last week which had me punching the air – yes! The author says even people who don’t normally remember their dreams can become dream-recallers through practice. He recommends
recording whatever you can remember immediately upon waking
not trying to judge or analyse your dreams
Then he outlines the advantages for authors in keeping a dream journal, which boil down to inspiration, breaking through blocks and seeing the world differently.
I couldn’t have put it better, but there are a few things I might add about the dream journal itself.
My two most recent journals – they have to look and feel beautiful!
When I first started recording my dreams over forty years ago, I wrote them in school exercise books, just the dreams, packed together with no extra content except the date. I’m not knocking it – that’s all you need in order to establish great dream-recall.
Then I studied dream interpretation using the Western psychological model, and began to include some brief details about what was going on in my waking life, so in effect my journal recorded two parallel lives, waking and dreaming. This threw up some real insights into how both dreams and waking life work, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it if you’re looking to use your dreams as a creative resource.
Interpreting comes naturally with experience, in the same way as experience of life deepens our understanding, but if we approach dreams with this primary focus it’s easy to lose the bigger picture. Understanding dreams only as expressions of the waking life would be like understanding every piece of fiction you write as autobiography. It might be, but if you examine that too closely you can lose sight of the story and its own life.
My diaries have evolved: dreams, drawings, bits stuck in…
Gradually, my dream journals have evolved so that although the core of them is my daily record of my dreams, and brief notes about events and preoccupations in my waking like, I’m also recording lots of other stuff such as
thoughts and observations that have engaged me during the day
sketches
plans
story ideas
tarot readings
notes on books I’m reading
quotations
scraps of paper stuck in with cellotape if I’ve jotted ideas down when I’m away from the house
This may sound like a mess, but it’s actually rather lovely, because I use different colour gel pens for the various different kinds of entry.
It may also sound like a major commitment of time but it isn’t. The only regular writing I do is the dreams – all the rest is random, and I’d be doing it anyway, only previously it was scattered about in various nooks and notebooks.
Pulling it all together means it adds up to a rich and satisfying record of my life, both inner and outer, which seems to provide a rich seed-bed in which my various writing projects can easily root and grow.
Great news today – Writing in the House of Dreams has received the Very Inspiring Blogger Award from the lovely Katherine Langrish, writer and story-teller extraordinaire. You may have heard her on Radio 4’s Open Book programme recently, discussing dystopian fiction.
Under the conditions of the award, I have to tell you seven things about myself, and as it’s spring, I’m giving you seven pictures from my garden, which is always a source of happy ponderings for me:
1. My garden is loooong, so even on a day when it’s too cold to sit out, I like to walk up and down on breaks from my computer
2. When it’s warm, you can’t beat a swing seat for sunning
3. Coffee at the table under the trees is good when there are notes or MSS to read
4. For contemplation, a nice peaceful pond
5. Flowers, obviously…
6. Pending DIY projects to help me stay focused on my writing
7. And even on rainy days, watching the birds through my study window
But enough about me! Now I have the privilege of nominating five Very Inspiring Bloggers myself. This time I’m going for blogs on writing, and here they are:
The astonishingly prolific rarasaur – I know she’s already got this award, but I like spreading the word about the good stuff!
Just after Christmas, when I had finished my story set on a remote island, I had a brief hiatus, so I asked for a dream.
I’m in Cunningsburgh, in Shetland, but the coast is completely different. Instead of the wide flat apron of land around the voe, it’s high and mountainous.
Cunninsburgh, looking out towards the voe
We go to the top of the cliffs and start our familiar walk, down the narrow path which clings to the side of the steep slope down to the sea. We normally make this a circular walk, but when we reach the water and look up at the path ahead, it looks too long and hazardous. So we double back the way we came, and return to the top once again.
When I wrote the dream down, I knew I’d dreamt about this place before, and done the walk in other dreams; I also remembered that it almost always coincided with this stage in my writing, when I had finished one MS and not yet started another.
After I finish a book, I need a fallow time to rest and recover, refocus and regroup. I play with lots of ideas and then, just when I’m starting to feel impatient, one of them grabs me.
My dream of going down to the water reminds me of an idea I’ve read in books on writing, that writers need to take time out and ‘go down to the well’ to keep refreshing their ideas. Julia Cameron talks about it in her ‘writer’s date’ suggestion in ‘The Artist’s Way.’
Julia Cameron recommends taking time out every week, but I find my writing pattern is such that when I’m in the flow I just want to write 24:7 till I reach the end, and then take a chunk of time out to recover (and get some sleep!)
After this dream, and a period of rest, what eventually grabbed me was a return to the world of Peony Pinker, the protagonist of my latest published series. I guess that’s why I doubled back in my dream.
It’s only through writing down your dreams and noting alongside them the main things that are happening in your waking life, that you start to see patterns and parallels emerging. Certain themes and situations in your dreamworld may become familiar, as they reflect recurring themes and situations in your waking life.
I’ve just delivered my follow-up story to Peony Pinker, ‘Me and my big mouth, by Maddy Monday,’ so I won’t be surprised if I find myself walking back down to the water in my dreams these next few weeks.
If you’re a dreamer, are you aware of a recurring link between a dream situation and a waking one in your own life?
If you’re a writer, how often do you ‘go down to the well’ – for a few hours every week, or for longer periods between writing projects?
I’ve always thought of myself as a very happy writer. I used to put it down purely to the fact that I was a dreamer first, and therefore completely used to coming and going across the threshold of consciousness, which meant I never experienced any kind of writing angst about getting blocked or running out of ideas.
Penny was right – I love this kind of book. I enjoy doing practical exercises that help me to arrive at different ways of looking at things. I’m a great fan of life coaching too, having had some life-changing sessions with astrological life coach, Pat Neill, a few years ago and more recently a brilliant group session with a writing coach at a Lapidusnetworking day.
What has become clearer for me through reading this book is that another reason I’m very happy in my writing is that my goals are perfectly attuned to my core values.
We commonly measure writing success in terms of sales and celebrity, but I have never felt any of that is important; I haven’t felt jealous, anxious or disheartened about having less of a public profile than many of my writing friends.
My core values, it turns out, are in order of importance:
Nature/health. I love the writing life because it means I can live somewhere remote and go walking in nature every day
Loving/caring/sociability. I enjoy the connection with readers, for example here on my blog, although it’s medium-profile and profit-free. One of my main drives in writing for children is to suggest ideas which might help them create positive experiences and deal with difficult ones
Originality/self-expression. The parable of the talents has always informed my life, and it feels very important to me that we explore, uncover and develop our God-given gifts, whatever they might be
Spirituality/solitariness. This was the surprising one, because I’d have thought it would rank higher, but when I did the next exercise, expanding upon these core values, I discovered that all of the first four boil down to ways of celebrating the divine, in myself, the world and other people
You are more likely to achieve your writing goals if they fit with your core values in life. Should you manage to achieve goals that don’t, your success is less likely to make you feel happy.
That is not to say you are limited forever to where you are today, because core values can change and evolve. Like you yourself, they are a work-in-progress.
But for this moment and this step, understanding how your current writing goals relate to what your soul wants is empowering and may be a revelation. Like Penny, I can totally recommend this book.
Have you ever thought about how well your writing goals tie in with your core values?
Jenny Alexander's blog: Writing in the House of Dreams 