I don't know how many people who look at this blog also ever read my Live Journal (The Region Between)--I seem to have cultivated a couple different followings that overlap a little bit but not completely. That's okay, and that's why I started the LJ in the first place, to keep some my non-M-Brane business off of this page so that it wouldn't annoy people. But I thought I'd mention here to writers in particular, that I recently started a fun (to me) project of using the LJ to take notes on weird dreams that I have. I think I've mentioned before that images and narratives from dreams frequently stick with me and inspire fiction. Nearly everything that I have attempted to write in recent memory has had its origin in a dream.
A lot of people say that they never remember dreams, or at least seldom recall any detail. I think, however, that one can cultivate the habit of remembering them. For me, the ones I recall best generally happen in that period of sleep not long before I am about to wake up for the day or in the early part of sleep (like when I doze for an hour on the couch and things that I am hearing on the TV weave their way into REM state). What I usually do upon awakening is simply think about it for a minute, just review whatever I can remember as immediately as possible upon awakening, and generally the main points stick in memory. And even if the narrative sense of the dream is lost, sometimes images and scenery will linger, and those can be interesting in themselves.
I've often seen the recommendation that one keep a notepad next to the bed to take notes on dreams, or even speak some observations into a recording device right away upon awakening. In my case, the former would never work (I can't handwrite anything for crap--not even a brief note), and the latter would certainly annoy my partner. Indeed, he has little patience for it when I try to tell him about a dream under any circumstances...because he thinks they are intensely boring. So instead of boring him, I will try the patience of my LJ followers. One can peek in on my dream journal using the dream journal tag. There are only four such entries so far, and they probably are fairly dull. But sfnal geekiness surfaces constantly, which suggests that my subconscious is wonderfully marinated in it.
A lot of people say that they never remember dreams, or at least seldom recall any detail. I think, however, that one can cultivate the habit of remembering them. For me, the ones I recall best generally happen in that period of sleep not long before I am about to wake up for the day or in the early part of sleep (like when I doze for an hour on the couch and things that I am hearing on the TV weave their way into REM state). What I usually do upon awakening is simply think about it for a minute, just review whatever I can remember as immediately as possible upon awakening, and generally the main points stick in memory. And even if the narrative sense of the dream is lost, sometimes images and scenery will linger, and those can be interesting in themselves.
I've often seen the recommendation that one keep a notepad next to the bed to take notes on dreams, or even speak some observations into a recording device right away upon awakening. In my case, the former would never work (I can't handwrite anything for crap--not even a brief note), and the latter would certainly annoy my partner. Indeed, he has little patience for it when I try to tell him about a dream under any circumstances...because he thinks they are intensely boring. So instead of boring him, I will try the patience of my LJ followers. One can peek in on my dream journal using the dream journal tag. There are only four such entries so far, and they probably are fairly dull. But sfnal geekiness surfaces constantly, which suggests that my subconscious is wonderfully marinated in it.
