Monday, June 27, 2022

IDEAS

 


Ideas. Where do they go?

Now that sounds like a rhetorical question, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s a literal one. Where do you store that idea that flashes like a brilliant meteor you try to catch before it flickers out while you’re working on something else?

Sometimes those ideas come from dreams. I’m very envious of folks that remember a dream and then turn it into a bestseller or sellers.😊I do well to remember the gist of my dreams let alone convert them into a block-busting series.😊


 Besides trying to remember them before they fade, I have an extra step. These days, everything I write has a Western theme. So not only do I have to remember a thought as it’s dissipating, I have to convert that idea into a Western setting and often to a different time.

Somehow the great ideas that start as a saga in my dreams often trickle down to a few sentences, a vague beginning and ending. I type up that sentence or two then wonder what happened to the rest of the dream. I save them in doc where they languish. And languish. And languish. Often times outliving my computers.

Recently, I started a folder labeled Unfinished Ideas then began combing through my documents. I found some of those ideas I’d forgotten about under ‘unknown’, ‘next western romance’, etc.

 

I haven’t converted those dreams into stories yet, but at least now I can find them.

What about you? What do you do with your ideas, your story-worthy dreams? Where do you keep them?  Have you actually converted a dream into a story? 


 Wherever you keep your dreams, I hope you hold them close, take them out, dust them off and one day bring them to life.

 

Sandra

 

10 comments:

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Sandra - so many ideas - great thoughts here ... I get inspiration from many places and thankfully manage to harness a few. A dreamscape folder seems a good idea - I do have lots of half-written and actioned posts ... still I cope - and my brain is fairly full! Cheers - have a good idea week - Hilary

Natalie Aguirre said...

Sounds like you have a great idea for keeping track of your new ideas. I don't have tons of them so I keep them in my head for now.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Like you, I rarely remember my dreams.

D.K. Wall said...

I want to be able to record notes in any format (handwriting, typing, audio) and from any device (phone, table, desktop). I use a free app called Obsidian as my journal and brainstorming for stories.

So I can grab my phone and record a short audio, or write with a stylus and table, or type at a keyboard and save the ideas in one place.

The cool part is Obsidian just saves everything as markdown files, so it's easy to import into a writing app like Scrivener or Word when I'm ready.

L. Diane Wolfe said...

Almost every story I've ever written started as a dream.

H.R. Bennett said...

I can't say I've had many ideas come from dreams, but I think that's largely because of the structure of my dreams. I'm a pretty common lucid dreamer, so I have a great deal more influence on my own dreams. More often then not, the topics will interwind, but that's because I just make them that way. Very rarely do I have something spark me in the other direction.

Mirka Breen said...

When I was younger, I would wake up remembering my dreams more often than not. Now it is the exception. I've read that there are ways to rain oneself to recall dreams.

Bijoux said...

I had a wacky dream this week that a gorilla was upstairs in my house and I had to have Middle Child come downstairs with me and wait till my husband got home to get rid of it. But then we heard him playing basketball outside with the gorilla afterwards and we were pissed.

No, I wasn’t drinking before bed.

Michelle Wallace said...

I never remember my dreams so I can safely say that my story ideas do not come from dreams.

J.Q. Rose said...

I don't remember my dreams either. Maybe that's a good thing. But yes I do get ideas while being awake at 3 am and can't go back to sleep. More than likely, great ideas hit me in the shower! I'm going to start that folder for keeping ideas. But I'll wait till I get out of the shower before recording them!