Hope Writes

I was awakened this morning from quite an odd dream, wherein I was losing my hair. It was literally falling out of my head in chunks as I ran my hands through my hair. Weird.

Well, I’m the kind of person who believes some dreams have meanings. Usually, the ones that stick with me after I’m awake are the ones who have some kind of meaning. So I headed to my favorite dream dictionary to look this one up.

“Losing your hair also signifies a lack of strength and that you do not possess the power to succeed in an undertaking. You may be feeilng weak and vulnerable.”

Wow. Nail on head.

Last night, before bed, I wrote out some of my fears at the moment in my journal. Then I proceeded to “work out” the problem in my journal, which I do from time to time. (Brainstorming in a journal is very helpful sometimes, by the way!) Once I had clearly mapped out a solution for myself, I then proceeded to write more fears:

• What if this doesn’t work?
• What if I’m totally off base with this idea?
• Maybe I don’t know enough to put this into action.

So I suppose all my doubts and fears didn’t exactly get dumped on the page, since I ended up having that dream anyway.

I said all that to say this…

Our dreams can open us up to possibilities. Now, I could sit here and give myself the “Woe is me” speech. I could tell myself that I should forfeit those plans I sketched out in my journal last night because, obviously from my dream I don’t have what it takes to undertake what I mapped out in my journal. But me…? I’m hard-headed.

Instead, what I take from this dream is that my sub-conscious is worrying and playing out the scenerio in the background. I’m literally trying to figure out for myself if I am capable of succeeding. And you know what, I think I am! Most of the time, I am the one who stands in my own way.

I’ve heard plenty of writers say that you should use your dreams as springing boards for fictional pieces. And, while this is true, I propose you use your dreams for something totally different. Use them to inspire and encourage yourself. Use them to be a motivating factor for what you’re doing in real life.

If you are feeling unsure of yourself and that comes out in your dream, ask yourself how you can turn that around. What can you do to gain more self-confidence? Maybe you’ve been overwhelmed with a large amount of work, and that is starting to manifest itself through your dreams. Perhaps you should figure out a way to pare back a bit and allow yourself some breathing room.

Not every dream means something. But if you have one of those that haunt you the day after, maybe you should stop and ask yourself what it means and how your writing can benefit from it.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Writing tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.