Dream Interpretation for Writers

Using Dream Interpretation to Enrich Your Fiction and Improve the Critique Experience

Offered by Laura K. Deal, Ph.D.

Certified Dream Work Facilitator and 20-Year Veteran of Critique Groups

Curious about your dreams? Curious about how to make dreams in your fiction richer with symbolism? Dreams and fiction share the language of metaphor, so understanding dreams is an excellent skill for writers to develop. Come learn about dream reading, a simple technique for exploring dreams in groups, and an important tool in any writer’s toolbox for giving and receiving critique, creating richer characters, and playing with imagery. We’ll combine writing prompts with dream reading, offering everyone opportunities for insights into dream imagery and self-awareness.

1p.m.-5p.m., Saturday, May 12, 2012     Caritas Spiritist Center

5723 Arapahoe Avenue, Ste. 1A, Boulder, CO 80303

$45 ($40 for Caritas Members)

To register, or for further information, contact Laura — laura@lauradeal.com

Workshop is limited to 25 participants

Laura K. Deal is a practicing Metaphorian who is compassionately curious about what makes us all tick. She’s a Certified Dream Work Facilitator and belongs to three critique groups, as well as Pikes Peak Writers, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, BroadUniverse, and the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Her fiction has appeared in Wolfsongs Vols. 1 and 2, Space Sirens, and Cricket Magazine, and her poetry  in Mise en Poem and Asinine Poetry.  You can find her at www.LauraDeal.com and www.FirstChurchofMetaphor.org.

I recently launched a new website/blog, the First Church of Metaphor, which brings together my interests in writing, dream work, visual arts, music, and inspirational quotes and videos. Sometimes, an idea takes hold which can’t be denied. When that’s an idea for a story or novel, I have to write it. In the case of my new website, the idea grew over several months, becoming clearer and clearer until I really had no choice but to give it a try. I hope you’ll stop by and see what you think. Happy New Year!

Yesterday I talked about how much fun it is to have a community of people all playing the same wildly creative game. Because it’s wildly creative, we learn to laugh in the face of our common experiences. Grappling with the muse can be like wrestling a slippery octopus, and humor is a reasonable response to the absurdities that arise. I have a friend who says, “Only the truth is funny.” We find something funny when we recognize our own experience in it, and so having the insider’s view makes this even funnier:

There are three more videos coming about Whiney Writer’s NaNoWriMo experience, coming Nov 10, 20, and 30th. (You can find them at The Wild Writers or on You Tube.

Whiney Writer is also blogging about her experience with NaNoWriMo over at The Wild Writers. Today she’s talking about getting ready. Be sure to check back with her on November 28 to see how she’s doing.

Meanwhile, go write that novel!

I’ve been writing every day for twelve years, and I quickly learned that to balance the time I spent alone at my computer, listening for the story inside me, I needed community. I’d always had a supporter in my sister, Karen Robinson, who awoke in the pre-teen me the possibility, the glorious potential, of writing my own stories. She led by example, being older and very clever, and my earliest efforts had plots and characters very much like hers. I found community as an adult in my critique groups, and at conferences, discovering some of my truest friends among writers. I found it in groups of dream workers, where I found my spiritual home, and where I could play in the stories offered by not only my unconscious, but by others’ as well.

All of that was more than enough for a long time. Then in 2008, I decided to try NaNoWriMo, mostly to shake up a writing routine that had gone stale. To my delight, I discovered a whole community of fun, intense, and creative people. I asked questions on the forums of the kind that a Google search wouldn’t answer. I received thoughtful and generous answers. I went to local write-ins at cafes, and met some of those fun, intense, and creative people in person. I found camaraderie on list-serves for other writing groups, as people asked, “Who else is doing NaNoWriMo?” As for the buzz on the internet, I read it with an insider’s point of view, finally understanding what it meant to be joining the fun and taking on the challenge.

I hope you’ll be part of the NaNoWriMo party this year!

By doing NaNoWriMo, I’ve discovered that I can write that much, that intensely, for a month at a time. I can listen that closely to a story, and get it down on paper in a blaze of concentration and intensity. I can make a commitment to myself and keep it. This is the basis of my writing life–a commitment I made to myself in September of 1999 that I would give a part of each day to writing stories. It was hard, in those early days, to grab time away from my job as a mom with little kids at home, but it was crucial for my emotional well-being. I needed the intellectual escape into creating a world of my own, writing a story that I would like to read. I needed to make a commitment to myself, that I would honor the work I’d been called to do. I promised myself I’d write a page a day. A page of story, or if I were between books, memoir exercises I found in Writing From Life by Susan Wittig Albert. Every day, every week, every month, every year. As anything one does daily for months, it became a habit. As anything one does with the conscious intention of honoring spirit, it became a practice.

Fast forward nine years. I had over a dozen manuscripts filling my trunk–the result of enjoying writing first drafts more than revision–and I’d been circulating revised and polished manuscripts for a while. I was frustrated with not “breaking in” to the publishing world with my novels. I needed something fun. I had an idea for the next book in my queue. I debated about trying NaNoWriMo. Then I had a dream, of an ancient ancestor, and I saw that my dreams wanted me to write the ghost story “Birdie’s Journal.” What November of 2008 proved to me was that I could spend longer hours in the chair and feel even better about myself at the end of the day.

I couldn’t do it every month, because I can’t edit other work while I’m doing NaNoWriMo. I admire writers who aren’t pulled away by their obligations as parents and householders and are able to write a few thousand words every day. Maybe one day, when my nest is empty, I’ll find that I’m one of those writers. Since I’m not there yet, I’ll plunge into NaNoWriMo.

Some people think we shouldn’t write a novel in a month. Some people think Wrimos aren’t “real” writers. There will always be naysayers, but my husband taught me the following mantra, which I happily pass along to you: Renounce unsuitable people. Why listen to people who tell you not to play with your own creativity? They’re only saying it because they’re telling themselves not to play with their own creativity. Why not jump in and play a game with a hundred thousand or so like-minded people? It’s a game in which you stand to claim great rewards for your effort. And if you don’t “win”? You’ve learned something about yourself, and clarified your priorities, and maybe set the story aside to think about some more. Not everyone is called to write novels. But we are all called to explore our creativity. The more we can speak the language of metaphor with one another, the more we’ll understand about ourselves and the better the world will be. I know my world’s better when I play than when I don’t.

And if you don’t think you’ve got creativity? I encourage you to get in the habit of listening to your dreams. Your day dreams, your night dreams. Write them down. And if you don’t remember, make a note of how you feel, or if there’s a song in your head. Listen for your imagination. Noodle around on a piano, or make a collage. Even if you don’t do NaNoWriMo, you’re hereby invited to play in your creativity every day, because living creatively is the best kind of living there is.

I go into NaNoWriMo without an outline. I have an idea for a story, the main character and essentially what happens. The barest of bones. I may have some notes, which is the closest I get to an outline. I jot down brainstorms, some of which won’t prove useful. I consider the opening scene. Because I write by the seat of my pants, I really only need that lead into the story, that one scene that gets me into the world. Then I write it as it comes to me, and the more I write the more glimpses I get into the overall structure, the plot points, the additional characters. I make notes as ideas arise, and keep writing the story. So NaNoWriMo is perfectly suited to me. I don’t usually write so much a day. I probably have a daily average of about a quarter of the NaNoWriMo word count the other eleven months of the year. The slower pace allows me time and head room to revise other manuscripts while still making progress on a first draft, and allows for more balance overall in my life. But for one month out of the year, it’s a rush to open the spigot wider and let a story flow through in a torrent.

At the end of the month, I have a first draft of a novel (or at least the first half, if it’s a big fat fantasy), the raw material of my craft. That’s a kind of wizardry, making something from the voices in my head.

I was still fairly new to Twitter when Chris Baty answered one of my tweets. I was a little star struck. I imagined his busy life, prepping for the thirteenth NaNoWriMo, the last before he steps down as executive director. When an email of mine to the good people who run NaNoWriMo went astray, he helped me follow up. He writes great pep talks. But most importantly, he’s doing good in the world, creating a website with his team to bring everyone together so we can all talk in the forums, and find our local events to meet other Wrimos in person. He unabashedly encourages people to plunge headlong into a creative effort. And he’s brought NaNoWriMo to the schools (through the Young Writers Program) as a way to generate writing enthusiasm and bring fun to the classroom. When kids write they understand their world better. They learn to follow their own creativity, which they’ll need to fix the world our gluttony has left them.

When I’ve taught writing to kids, my focus has always been on fun. I would offer an exercise with some direction in mind, but I always assured the kids that they were entirely welcome to go off in their own directions. One of my students declared that the “Rules were set in Play-doh.” Clearly I have an affinity for Chris Baty’s mission, especially because it’s rooted in humor, respect, and the invitation to participants to explore their own creativity and to tell their own story.

Telling the story inside of me is good practice for creating the story of my life. Thanks Chris, the team at the Office of Letters and Light, and all the volunteers who make NaNoWriMo as wonderful as it is.

NaNoWriMo starts on All Saints Day, followed on November 2 by All Souls Day. For me, it’s perfectly timed in the year, when the veils are thin and spirits are said to be near. The first year I did NaNoWriMo, a story idea had been growing, of a young woman lost in grief over the end of a serious romance. When her grandmother has to move from the family home, Jenna finds a trunk with pictures of her great-grandmother Birdie. She also finds a mostly empty journal. But when Jenna tries to use it for a journal, the words that flow from her pen tell Birdie’s story.

I knew I’d be holding a lens to my own ancestors’ attitudes about gender roles and racism. The dreams that convinced me to do NaNoWriMo told me that loud and clear.  The story flowed easily, especially Birdie’s. I noticed a few poltergeist effects during the month–papers on my desk shifting suddenly while I wrote alone in my office, for example. I chose to acknowledge them as Birdie’s announcement of her presence. Call her spirit, call her story character–for me she’s both. The story flowed through me fairly cleanly. I had enough words, and a possible ending, on November 28, but went to bed unsure of whether the story was done.

The next day, I realized there were two more scenes to write, so I did one on each day, finishing on the 30th with an enormously satisfying “The End.” The story made me feel like a wizard–magically conjuring a novel I loved in 30 days. I printed my certificate, and showed it to anyone who would put up with my bragging.

The whole experience was a kind of magic, the result of my long apprenticeship in listening for the story combined with the enthusiasm to work in a new way, thanks to NaNoWriMo.

I wasn’t going to blog about this, but I sat down to write a new scene for the rewrite I’m working on, and this came out instead. I blame Maureen Johnson, whose blog moved me deeply, and I want to say thanks in more than a tweet. I’ve been trying to avoid the coverage of the 10th anniversary, knowing I could get sucked in deeper than would be good for me, but I can’t avoid the reminders, everywhere, that the day is upon us.
Maureen gave a gift to the world, to me, with her description of her experience in New York. In thanks, I’d like to offer my experience of the day, far away in Colorado. Just another perspective.
I no longer remember exactly when I heard it. At school drop off, probably, at 8:20 or so a.m. I’ve never been one to tune into the news first thing in the day, finding my life full enough with getting my older daughter to her second grade class and the younger one ready for preschool. Parents gathered around the door talked about it, I’m sure.
That morning I had an exercise class and couldn’t bear to be home alone, so I went. As I drove down the street in the neighborhood, a squirrel darted out, as they do. What I felt as I hit the brake and safely watched the animal run across the street was a profound need to not hurt anything or anyone, in any way. Not that I don’t always brake for squirrels, but that day, my soul’s awareness tried to grow big enough to absorb all that pain, and I couldn’t bear another drop.
The exercise class met for the first time that morning. Rows of younger and older moms, a couple of men, one baby, all on the floor of the gymnasium at the local rec center. As I lay on my back doing whatever posture or movement we were doing, I had a view of the whitewashed industrial ceiling of the room, with its skylights and high windows. It seemed so wrong to go on with our lives while New Yorkers’s lives had been shattered. It seemed impossible not to. The utterly helpless feeling lasted weeks and weeks.
I returned home to find my husband watching the TV. He’d heard at work, and after he took care of essentials, he came home. We sat and watched together, trying to understand what it would mean for our country. My husband, a gentle, reserved man, said, “It’s going to be bad.” With Bush in office, we both foresaw war. We prayed for peace. That afternoon at school pick-up, I saw Hallie’s dad, our local EMT. He’d shaved his head in a helpless and symbolic gesture of support. We all wanted to do something, something more than send money.
Our kids were young enough that we opted not to expose them to the news. They heard about it at school, of course, and we answered their questions as best we could, but we saw no need to play the news, which showed the same footage, over and over, as if it hadn’t seared into our minds the first time. I’ve never been great at holding back tears, and they flowed freely over the next few weeks every time the kids at school sang a patriotic song or said the pledge of allegiance.
The attack on New York didn’t affect me the same way as it would have if I’d been there, but the grief washed through me just the same. One viral email that left me sobbing showed the flags of country after country at half-staff in worldwide sympathy. How glorious the possibility that we could retain that good-will. With hindsight I can say, how appallingly tragic that we didn’t.
Last month I heard another New Yorker’s story, as my new friend and hostess, Dana Hayward, told me what she’d been through in New York that day. I’d never been to New York City before, but Dana and Steve’s open-hearted welcome made the trip much more relaxed. The evening that Dana told me what she remembered, I’d been in Manhattan for a couple of days and could better picture the landscape of her memories. At my daughter’s request, we didn’t visit the World Trade Center site. If I’d been alone, I’d have gone, and shed tears.
Every time in the last ten years that a squirrel has darted in front of my car, I’ve thought of that feeling, that morning. We create our own memorials out of our own experience, and I want to let Maureen, and Steve and Dana, and everyone who was affected, know that I’m holding you all in my thoughts and heart today.
My wish for us all: Let’s walk gently on the earth and among our fellow living beings.