'Lost' Dreams

When I'm in the middle of a near-final manuscript revision, I often have 'lost' dreams: either I am lost in a house or a city, or my purse or wallet is lost.  I either can't find my way out (of a house or city) or I can't prove who I am (purse/wallet = have proof of identity).

In the houses, rooms lead to other rooms, hallways wrap around in a maze, I can't get back to where I started, and I don't know how to exit.  This seems a pretty transparent dream of where my mind is in the revision process!

The lost wallet and purse dreams are somehow tied up with my identity as a writer vs. my 'other' lives as wife, mother, friend, sister, etc. Who am I? How am I going to 'prove' it?

I know, though, that I will eventually find my way through the manuscript and my various selves will not be lobbying for attention . . . and the 'lost' dreams will subside.

Revising Dresses

Often when I'm either writing or revising a book, I dream of dresses. In the dream, I'll be looking for 'the right dress' and I'll discover–around a corner or in a back room–a cache of beautiful dresses in rich, rare fabrics and unusual design–nothing outlandish but exactly what I am looking for: something classic and yet different from all the other many look-alike dresses I've encountered.

I used to awake from these dreams wishing I could create dresses like those, and one day I realized I had already created the dresses, in the dream(s). Ta da!


I have come to recognize that these dreams are transparent reflections of my dreams for the book: I'm trying to write something beautiful, something classic and yet different from all the other books out there. Something that fits me.


The above sketch, which doesn't do justice to the dresses I 'saw,' is from a dream two nights ago. In the dream, I 'found' them in a back room of a small boutique. They were of the softest, combed cotton, summery and light. The front had two longer panels on the sides and a shorter panel in the front. There were two dresses: one in faded denim blue with a narrow khaki stripe, and the other in cream with tiny brown flowers sprinkled across the field of cream.

Try as I might, the sketches never do justice to the visions in the dreams, just as perhaps my books never do justice to the visions I have of them in my head.

But if I keep track of all these dresses, maybe one day I'll have enough for a collection! Ho!