by Naomi L. | September 17, 2014 | Blog, Creative Writing |
Welcome to the September round of Writers Reveal! This month’s topic was sent to us by Becky Fyfe of Imagine! Create! Write! Her prompt for us is “dreams”, so I decided to take advantage of the idea to write about a topic I’ve been meaning to share for a while: dreams as a source of creative inspiration. Thanks for the prompt, Becky!
The Stories Hidden in the Subconscious
We’re all well familiar with dreams, those little “films” that play out in our heads while we’re asleep. Some people easily remember their dreams after waking up, while others recall them only once in a while. There are nights when we seem to have several and nights when we barely seem to have one. Dreams have been associated with prophecies, divine messages, our deepest desires and a strange combination of the things that happened to us the day before. But one thing they apparently have in common is that they’re a way for the subconscious to tell stories.
Dreams are a subject that I’ve always found intriguing. It’s one of the reasons Inception is on my list of favorite science fiction movies. I almost always remember my dreams when I wake up, and because of that, I’ve found plenty of inspiration for stories hidden in them. More than once, I’ve written a story based on an idea taken directly from a dream. Many of my dreams tell romantic stories, while others are full of action and adventure. I’ve had nightmares that inspired horror stories and euphoric dreams from which I was sad to wake up. My favorites even include some element of fantasy such as flying or breathing underwater. Yes, my dreams can get pretty bizarre, but I like to think they’re a reflection of my active writer’s imagination!
Harvesting Ideas from Dreams
So how can you get the most use out of your dreams? It’s simple. If you’re lucky enough to remember your dreams after you wake up, I highly recommend writing them down. Dreams can be invaluable sources of story ideas, even if (and sometimes especially if) they’re confusing and surreal. If you tend to remember your dreams from almost every night, it may be good practice to keep a dream diary. Much like a regular journal, it can help you hold on to inspiration and can serve as a reference for ideas you didn’t even know you had!
So writers, don’t take your dreams for granted. Embrace them, write them down, try to understand them (however incomprehensible they may be) and extract as many ideas from them as you can. There may just be a goldmine of creative inspiration in your own subconscious!
Do your dreams inspire you? What stories have you written based on an idea that came from a dream?
This has been a special topic post for Writers Reveal, a monthly blog swap among several talented writers. Be sure to check out the other blogs participating in the event. Thanks for reading!
Other bloggers in Writers Reveal
Melissa Khalinsky: Melissa Writes
Becky Fyfe: Imagine! Create! Write!
Ashley Howland: Ghostnapped
Emily Hawker: You Learn Something New Every Day
Lee-Anne Walker: Is it just me?
We’re looking for more bloggers to join our circle! If you’re interested in participating in this monthly roundup, be sure to contact Emily Hawker so she can include you in our email list. Thank you!
by Naomi L. | August 20, 2014 | Blog, Creative Writing |
Hello, and welcome to this year’s August round of Writers Reveal! First off, I’d like to welcome a new member who’s joining us this month: Lee-Anne Walker of “Is it just me?“. Welcome to the circle, Lee-Anne! Glad to have you with us!
Today’s topic was sent to us by Emily Hawker, who suggested the prompt: “when I grow up”. Since I’ve already written a nonfiction post about this topic for Writers Reveal in the past, I decided to use this second opportunity to write a short story based on that idea. I hope you enjoy what I’ve written. Thanks for the prompt, Emily!
Dreaming Big
Carl Fredricksen’s house, from Pixar’s UP (2009)
You have to choose one.
That was all Sophie had been hearing for the past two weeks. To say it was starting to get on her nerves was an understatement.
Everyone else already knows. You should too.
But how could she? There were so many options that it was impossible to pick just one! It was too much pressure from her teacher, from her parents, from society in general. Fourteen was too young to know what she wanted to be when she grew up, and anyone else her age who said they already knew was almost definitely lying.
“Sophie…” Ms. Miller took a seat at her desk after all the other students had left. “I understand this is difficult, but I really do need you to make a choice by Friday. This paper is part of your grade. I don’t want to have to fail you because of something so trivial. It doesn’t have to be your final decision for life; I’m only asking for three to five pages on a career that interests you now.”
The teenage girl looked down at the pencil she was nervously tapping on her own desk. It was hard enough to produce an essay about any topic, but having a separate deadline for the subject matter only made it all the more stressful.
“I need more time”, she muttered awkwardly for the third time since last Monday. “Can’t I just surprise you at the end of the month?”
The English teacher shook her head. “The reason I ask for the topics two weeks in advance is so you’ll all have plenty of time to write the actual essays. I don’t want you scrambling for something to write about at the last minute, otherwise your work will suffer. Please think about it, Sophie. I expect you to have an answer by Friday.”
On that cue, Sophie grabbed her backpack and headed out the door, leaving Ms. Miller to sigh in exasperation at an empty classroom. It was going to be a long week.
From that Monday afternoon to Thursday morning, Sophie questioned everyone she knew about their chosen career paths, and each of them seemed to have a different insight on the subject. Her father claimed to enjoy his job as a business executive, while her mother encouraged her to consider a career in the sciences. Her older brother, who had been working toward a football scholarship for the last year, said he might want to become a professional athlete. Her friends had already expressed interest in every profession from doctors and lawyers to astronauts and world-touring singers. Even her parents’ friends and her friends’ parents had some interesting input, as several of them had switched majors in the middle of college and others still had yet to figure out what they really wanted to do with their lives!
So many ideas had been contributed in the last few days that by the time Sophie sat down at her room’s computer desk on Thursday afternoon, her head was still spinning with all the possibilities. The problem was not that she didn’t want to try any of them; it was that she wanted to try all of them. How could she hope to choose only one career when they all sounded so appealing?
Frustrated, the teenager glanced over at her bookshelf. She couldn’t remember ambition ever being this overwhelming. She used to spend hours getting lost in her books, reading about people who sailed across the ocean or had adventures in the sky, who solved mysteries and saved lives and fought for justice, and she’d always wonder if real life could be just as exciting as the stories on her shelf.
And that was when it hit her. Perhaps there was a solution to her dilemma after all, a way she could give her teacher an answer while still staying true to herself. Suddenly inspired, Sophie turned back to her desk and began to type. She typed all through the afternoon and well into the night, pausing only once for dinner and stopping only when the final period had been placed on the very last sentence at a quarter to midnight. Breathing an immense sigh of relief, the 14-year-old printed out her work and shut her computer off to prepare for her first good night’s sleep in weeks.
The following afternoon, after the bell rang at the end of English class and all her peers had filed out, Sophie approached Ms. Miller at her desk.
“So, Sophie”, the teacher began, “have you finally come up with–?”
Her question was cut short when the teenager dropped a stapled stack of papers on the desk. The adult glanced at it in surprise before looking up at her student with a puzzled expression.
“What is this?”
“My essay”, said Sophie with a smile. “All five pages of it. I had to edit some stuff out to make it fit, but it’s all there.”
Ms. Miller was amazed. “How did you manage this?”
“I thought a lot about what you said, that I had to make a choice, and I realized – no offense – that you were wrong. I figured out a way that I can choose everything and still do something completely different from all of it. And now I finally know what I want to do with my life.”
The teacher picked up the paper to study it closely. After reading the title, Ms. Miller looked up at her student with a smile that suggested she had never been prouder of her. Sophie could hardly contain her excitement as she announced her dream with a broad grin.
“I’m going to be a writer.”
This has been a special topic post for Writers Reveal, a monthly blog swap among several talented writers. Be sure to check out the other blogs participating in the event. Thanks for reading!
Other bloggers in Writers Reveal
Melissa Khalinsky: Melissa Writes
Becky Fyfe: Imagine! Create! Write!
Ashley Howland: Ghostnapped
Emily Hawker: You Learn Something New Every Day
Lee-Anne Walker: Is it just me?
We’re looking for more bloggers to join our circle! If you’re interested in participating in this monthly roundup, be sure to contact Emily Hawker so she can include you in our email list. Thank you!
by Naomi L. | January 31, 2014 | Flash Fiction, J.C. Wolfe's Writing |
(What If? Exercise: Read the description here.)
That game always took me anywhere I wanted to go.
I couldn’t remember a time when I was happier.
Capturing the clouds was all I ever wanted.
So now I’m following those lifelong dreams.
I will discover the real world.
With a camera beside me.
The sky’s the limit.
Follow the sun.
Look up.
Click.
This is another piece I wrote based on What If? Exercise 93: “Ten to One”. The exercise is to write a 55-word story in which the first sentence has ten words, the second has nine, etc., until the last sentence has only one word. The objective is to show that precision and thrift in writing can produce surprisingly powerful results. I hope you enjoy what I’ve written. Thanks for reading!
Dedicated to a good friend of mine, whose dreams always called him to two things: photography and the sky. Happy Birthday, man! Love ya!
Back to the story
by Naomi L. | September 11, 2013 | Blog, Creative Writing |
Hello, and welcome to another Writers Reveal (formerly Secret Subject Swap) post, brought to you by Emily Morgan of Emily Morgan Writes. This month’s topic was sent to me by Melissa, who suggested the prompt “When I grow up… Water”. Based on that idea, I decided to write about my thoughts as a child on what else besides a writer I wanted to be when I grew up. Thanks for the topic, Melissa!
The Dreams of Children
Elementary school is an important time in every person’s development. It’s that time when we learn the basic knowledge that will get us through the rest of our lives, when our minds are always buzzing with hundreds of questions about the world around us (or at least, mine was). It’s also a time when many of us start to think about what career paths we’d like to follow in the future.
When we were still children, grown-ups started asking us what we wanted to be when we were older, and those of us who took the question seriously began to ponder the possibilities. Some of us chose to become doctors. Some of us chose to become lawyers. Some of us chose to become scientists, or journalists, or politicians. Some of us chose to become athletes. And some of us chose to become artists.
But how many of us stuck to the first plan that came to mind? How many of us had only one plan to begin with?
I didn’t.
My Other Dream
Writing about what I wanted to be when I grew up is easy, but I still had to think about the last part of Melissa’s prompt: “water”. What could I say about “water”? I could write a fictional story about a young girl with a dream to study the ocean, but it would still be based heavily on real facts, because the truth is… that’s my story.
The first time I knew I wanted to be a writer was in the fourth grade. Creative writing was my greatest passion at the time, and I knew in my heart it was a decision that I was going to stick to for the rest of my life. But writing wasn’t the only career I wanted to pursue when I was a kid, because I had another passion: science.
Ever since I was about six years old, my favorite animal has been the bottlenose dolphin, mostly for its incredible intelligence and playful nature. Having spent a large part of my childhood living in southern Florida, my parents used to take us to Orlando all the time, where we’d visit all the big theme parks, including Sea World. It was there that I really developed a major interest in marine mammals, and I loved the attractions with dolphins so much that I eventually decided I wanted to be a dolphin trainer.
Over time, my passion for dolphins grew into a passion for ocean life in general, so that by the time I was in high school, my original plan had evolved from pursuing dolphin training to studying marine science. Years later, I graduated from university, and I now have a Bachelor’s degree in Biology.
From Dreams to Reality
So now what? Now I’m pursuing both my chosen career paths: creative writing and marine biology. I’m still doing research at my university while I prepare to start working toward a Master’s degree in Ecology, specializing in marine environments. In the meantime, I’m working on this blog to develop my skills and my identity as a writer, and I’m writing stories to release the creative energy inside me.
But these two paths are certainly not mutually exclusive. As a writer, I plan to draw from my experiences in science to write sci-fi stories with as much accurate detail as possible. As a biologist, I need to be skillful at writing to turn out high-quality papers for scientific journals, not to mention I need to be a creative thinker. In short, being able to follow both these paths is a wonderful experience, a real dream come true. I’m a scientist by day, an artist by night, and a dreamer by always.
What about you? What else did you want to do in life besides writing?
This has been a special topic post in Emily Morgan’s Writers Reveal. To learn more, just follow the button below to her site, and be sure to check out the other blogs participating in the event. Thanks for reading!
Other bloggers in the Writers Reveal
Melissa Khalinsky: Melissa Writes
Jodi Gibson: JFGibson
Becky Fyfe: Imagine! Create! Write!
Josefa: Always Josefa
Rhianna: A Parenting Life
Ashley Howland: Ghostnapped
Zanni: My Little Sunshine House
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