Dream a little dream for me

I think just about everyone has dreams. Happy dreams, sad dreams, and dreams that make you want to spit nails when you wake up, wake up in a cold sweat-heart-racing-terrified dreams, and dreams that are so outlandishly crazy and chaotic that they just don't make any sense. Sometimes our dreams are influenced by something we've watched on TV, a movie, something we've read or played. Sometimes they are influenced by food, cheese and popcorn seem to really make mine colorful. But whatever it is, in the end, we all end up dreaming (unless you're a person who can't dream).

I have a hard time winding down at night to go to sleep. My head races round and round, passes itself on the racetrack and generally makes me cranky. I've had this problem since High School and the best way to get my head to focus one thing so I can settle down, is to tell myself a story or in some cases, I demand that Skoora tell me one. Occasionally what ever I've told myself or what ever she's told me sneaks into my dreams thus creating something strange, although most of the time it doesn't, or I've slept too hard to remember.  What's important here are not the stories, what you ate, or anything else except the dreams themselves because sometimes, just sometimes you can take something from those dreams to add to a story or create an entire story from them.

Now just hear me out, I know dreams are freaking weird. I once had a dream that John Travolta in his Battlefield Earth costume/make up was chasing me along a beach. I hid in some cave and ended up running through them and coming out in a forest. From there I ran along a path to gate which protected fifty or so tree houses that made up a convent of nuns. To top it off Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was out in the day light helping the nuns with something, what I can't remember. What I do remember is that I had to get my butt into the tree house convent else John would get me. I'm not joking, this dream happened, and I've never even seen Battlefield Earth. But I kept a dream journal next to my bed and the only reason I remember this dream is because I wrote down as much as I could remember before I lost it. In this particular instance, I haven't used anything from the dream in a story. However, I've used elements or ideas that come from my dreams in other stories.

My challenge to you, try keeping a dream journal next to your bed. Try to get in the habit of writing down your dreams if you have time and can remember them. See if you can spin a story out of one or all of them, or maybe even add little things from one dream into a story and something from another.