Why I Wrote Sick – Dreams often set the tone for my day. I have vivid dreams that feel just as real as the fact that I’m siting here writing this blog. They form a vapor around me as I go about my normal life – whispers, impressions, and lingering emotions. I’ve always had the ability to overlay fantasy over reality (or the other way around), and I try not to box-in my perception. I think our human brains have room to grow if we let them, and I keep my idea of reality is very loosely defined (Carlos Castaneda and psychedelic drug use could have a part in this). Sometimes this swirling imagery makes me anxious because I feel like I don’t have anything solid to hold onto. But, most of the time it’s wonderful to experience life on so many levels.
My dreams and impressions are especially important to my writing. John Branch, the character in SICK, I met in this way. He didn’t have a name yet in the dream, but he was a beautiful and manic version of a young John Lithgow. I hadn’t seen John Lithgow movie in years! So I’m not sure why suddenly my brain conjured him up as this sick man. It still cracks me up to this day, but John Lithgow is perfect for him. Anyway, I wasn’t myself in the dream either. I was another woman, his wife, and I was a shorter, more grounded and level-headed sort of person. I was a person with faith in God.
I remember the dream house with the same familiarity as my own real home, but this place was decrepit and neglected. I had difficulty getting around the clutter and mess everywhere. The silent white light of autumn glowed from the windows. The wooden floors creaked as I approached the bed. My husband lay there limp and motionless; a smell was diffused into the air by the warmth of his body. It was pungent from the dried blood, antiseptic, and medicine, but also sweet and overripe from his clammy skin, his healing wounds, and his sickly breath. I remember that most from the dream, my husband’s smell. It fills my nose right now as I write this. His broken leg was in a cast; the rest of his body was covered in bruises. The soiled sheets clung to him, incubating him. If you’ve ever been around a very ill or badly hurt person, you will know that sickly smell of a healing or dying body.
He then asked me for pain medication, a shot of Demerol. I remember that although he looked anemic and weak, there was an underlying menace that made me uneasy. I sensed that behind his sweet requests, he was mocking me. I was a little bit resentful and a little bit fearful at the same time. It was just a flash of negative emotion, and then my reason blotted it out.
I felt foolish and guilty for thinking about him in that way. I was a good wife, and this was my husband, whom I had been with for years. We knew each other inside and out, didn’t we? And he loved me, and I loved him. No matter how much of a burden he was, I would take care of him forever. I gave him his shot, and smoothed the damp hair from his forehead.
The dream continued and I viewed the whole story to a shocking and revolting end. When I woke up, I just couldn’t shake it off. His watery-eyed stare. And my fear. The eerie fog of it snuck up on me for weeks. The experience clawed at me and wouldn’t let go.
I entertained the thought of writing it down. “Oh, yeah. Maybe I should write that as a book one day.” It wasn’t really my style, or so I thought. I never wrote anything like it before, but the scene just wouldn’t leave me alone. Then I researched the medical condition I was treating in the dream and discovered John Branch’s situation was real. I couldn’t believe it! I knew I had to write it.
So, I never set out to write a creepy suspense. I didn’t invent the plot or the characters. It was all handed to me by my subconscious. That’s the story behind SICK. Strange, but true.
Have you ever had a dream that just wouldn’t let you go?
Do you write or create from ideas based on dreams?
What role do dreams play in your waking life?
I’m happy to say my dream experiment worked out.
SICK is getting great reviews!
Check out what people are saying on Amazon.
PS: Part II is in revisions and coming very soon. Stay tuned!
I have this ridiculous reoccurring dream. I can fly but only so high maybe 20 or 30 feet up. I tried to analyze it. Maybe not to be able to soar higher in life and can’t at a disturbing plateau.
Is my dream telling me to try harder? Get off my butt and push forward to achieve my goals?
Or will it turn into a novel about a flubbing super hero.
The other dreams that are recurring are about life on the other side, I can see the potential for a novel.
I have to finish my current novel that I have written before I even begin a new project. But those dreams keeps swirling around my head screaming to be written and I scream back No!! I must finish one thing at a time. It is mean spirited dream and will not let me go.
I don’t often remember my dreams, probably because I tend to sleep less than six hours a sleep a night. Dreams speak to us though. My recurring one always deals with water, usually in the form of a broken aquarium or accidentally sending a fish or two down the drain when cleaning a fish tank. I’ve been told that imagery deals with anxiety and not feeling at home or unsettled, which pretty much fits my life to a tee most days. My most recent dream segment I remember is of a cat doing handstands in a football helmet. An odd conglomeration of images from the day before…
Most people I know have recurring dreams, but strangely enough, I don’t. I know water is highly symbolic. Fish probably are too. You can probably blame the cat doing headstand in a helmet on Facebook memes, lol.
Sometimes a dream will wake me up and I’ll get an idea for a story but generally my dreams are too disjointed. Congrats on the good reviews!
Thanks, Jan! Yeah, most of the time the dreams are totally abstract and don’t make any literal sense, but once in awhile I have one that is a complete movie. I can even wake up in the middle of it and go back to sleep and it will continue where I left off. The mysteries of the human mind…
I don’t use dreams for inspiration for my fiction, but I do use dreams to check on my well being. You know, I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in. When I’m happy I have certain kinds of dreams and when I’m depressed or sad I have certain kinds of dreams. Since I’m still trying to achieve things as a blogger/writer, a lot of my dreams deal with taking a journey of some kind toward some place. When I was young I did my share of reading the works of Freud and Jung. I felt that having some understanding of their work would make me a better writer. And I think it did.
I agree, Guy. I think all writers need a thorough schooling in psychology so they can know themselves and other people on a deeper level. Nothing is more boring than reading a shallow writer of shallow characters.
I also use dreams as clues to what’s going on in the background of my psyche. Sometimes we don’t realize that we’re troubled or stressed until we have a disturbing dream. I haven’t tried analyzing this “SICK” dream in a Jungian or Freudian way yet. Maybe I’m nursing a failed project that’s sucking the life out of me? It has been a challenging and stressful year. Luckily, I haven’t had anymore dreams this creepy!
have you tried that lucid dreaming?
Lucid dreaming? I don’t know what that is.
It’s when you’re aware you’re dreaming and you can control what you do in the dream. Here’s a recent article about it.