Dragons, hockey, adventure, mayhem, twists and turns…………….all the things I seem to dream about. I go to bed tired, and at some point find myself caught up in the plot of the series of books I’m trying to write. Whether it’s something tiny and detailed that the entire storyline hinges on, an overall feature or direction that the plot should take, homing in on a particular character trait, trying to answer a question about dragons or the world that they live in that I’m stuck on in the waking (well, who really knows!) part of my life.

All of these things……………I wouldn’t say torment me, because if I had the time to knit them together, I’d be on about my fourth or fifth book which would be great, but they do persist in throwing themselves at me night after night. I don’t seem to sleep badly, it just seems like something that goes on inside my tiny brain, while my body is resting.

So with this in mind, does anyone, again suffer isn’t really the right word, because a lot of the time it’s a blessing, but does anyone else go through the same sort of thing? My wife says she rarely dreams, or if she does, rarely remembers. For me, it’s either there the instant I wake up, or later that morning little snippets will tickle my consciousness, until I finally put them all together and remember exactly what it was I’d dreamed about/discovered/solved. It would seem that I’ve been able to remember most of my dreams for many years now, and most of the time they seem to be of some use. As someone who likes to tinker with computers (either building them physically, adding new software, or just generally fixing glitches or problems), I have in the past, quite often found myself puzzled by something I can’t fix, or frustrated about not knowing what to do next. When this happens, nearly all of the time I will wake up with an idea about how to fix said problem, or a few ideas about other things/options to try. This doesn’t just apply to computers; it might be something around the house……..how to create more space, something to do with the garden…….or even some other part of my life, such as friendships, hockey or work.

Now that I’ve written this down, it does seem a little ‘odd’, but everything I’ve said is true, and just seems normal to me. It does at the moment seem to focus heavily on the writing, maybe because I’m trying desperately hard to finish my third book, which is already longer than the second (which was about 216,000 words), and my best guess would say needs at least another 30,000 words to finish it. Perhaps the dreams are focused on this because some of my writing is done later on in the evening. It’s hard to find the time to write…..my children (one of whom is really quite ill), my wife, job, housework, cooking, etc………even the dreaded social media, all have to come before the writing…….so that’s the thing that nearly always loses out. I wish it didn’t, and I dearly wish I could get up in the morning and write all day, but that just simply isn’t possible. But these dreams keep on and on and on……….in a good way.

It’s almost as if there’s a story inside my head fighting to get out and be told. I do my best, but at the rate I’m going…………….it’s going to be in there for a very long time………………….HELP!!!!!!