Rush of Inspiration in a Dream: A Livestream Recounting of the Life and Death of a Story Never Written
Oh God that was so visceral and my heart is still racing and I think I’m actually holding my breath because wow that was an intense dream, maybe one of the most intense stories I could ever have thought up, and it came to me, complete and whole, and now I’m going to write it because fuck all, I haven’t written anything in almost two weeks!
And now I’m sitting down and the images are fleeing from my brain like a handful of balloons let go, but maybe if I jump high enough I can catch one or two or maybe even three of them, look at the strings, dangling there, daring me to catch them — and I missed most of them, but look, look, I have two!
Okay. Time travel. Dystopia. Time travel. Dystopia. I can do this. I can — wait. Wait. I only thought of that because I read the Wikipedia article on The Time Traveler’s Wife today. Well, whatever. It’s just a goofy short story, it won’t — whatever. Okay. Time travel and dystopia, and here we—
What? That is not what I was feeling. That little dribble of words on the page is not the juggernaut of a waterfall that crashed into my brain while I took a short nap. I don’t know what that miserable attempt is, but it’s not what I was —
Oh, well, I guess we just released the only two ideas from the dream. Bravo. Good job. I’ll just close this Word document and get on with my life.
