An idea came to me last night in a dream. It was a story idea, of course, as I’m struck with them at almost any given moment without rhyme or reason. Usually I hunt out a pad and pen to scribble down whatever line of dialog or narrative hits me – but this time I thought about it for a while before I wrote it in my idea book.

I thought about how personal of a connection this one was. It deals with the thought I often have of finding my Father or visiting with him even though the last time I saw him was almost 7 years ago.

This isn’t the first time an idea struck me in this manner – on the contrary it happens quite often. I think it’s something that happens to a great many writers. I know that the popular story from Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame is that she awoke from a dream about the first book and set out to write it. That dream has certainly done well for her.


I remember when I took a Psychology class in college, the Professor said dreams were, scientifically speaking, neurons in the brain firing randomly as we slept. The ‘dream’ itself a mere ’story’ the brain was weaving to make sense of the random images. So I thought this morning, as writers, do we inherently have a more active imagination and in turn dream more vividly?

Or, is it simply the fact that because we write we look for some sort of story even in the most obscure of our dreams? Is it that we are seeking for a story and we’ll use inspiration in any form we can get? I think maybe all of these are true.

That is, I think each and every writer’s inspiration and ideas come from very unique places at very unique times. I think it’s the same way with the visual and performing arts as well. I have a friend who composes music (at least part of the time) by playing it on his piano and letting his computer record the notes for him. That’s pure inspiration, from that clearing with the muse creature I told you about a while back.

So maybe my dream was a visit from my muse – a bite hard enough for me to remember it well after I woke up. Or maybe it was just a random firing of neurons that I’m trying to make meaning of myself. Either way, I’m dieing to write the story and that’s all that matters.