Dream Themes

The commonly held wisdom is that as someone who wants to make a go of writing, I should blog regularly, weekly if possible. I tried that a while back, but just can't do it, mainly because writing is dull. It's really dull.

An example commentary of my writing method involves 'get a cup of coffee, drink the coffee, write a bit, delete a bit, think, write a bit, judge it, delete or keep it'. I could post other things by other writers or TV programs, films etc. but between my job, my family and my writing I don't have the time, not if I want to sleep, and I do want to sleep, (right now, as it happens).

I'm posting this now because I have something vaguely fresh - a new book cover (see above) for a project that I started roughly a year back before stalling. I have since picked it up again and found it enjoyable (to me). I've gone against my natural instincts to just jump into writing it and have instead finished a plot synopsis first. I think it's pretty decent, so I'm going to try and finish it. It'll be a fantasy (of sorts), dreamlike in its oddness, tragedy and triumph.

Right, that doesn't fill up much of a page, so I'm now going to tell you all about common themes that crop up in my own dreams. Judge my psyche as you will...

• Living alone in decaying houses, often by the sea.
• Visiting the edge of the world (often by the sea too).
• Being in a house where the lights are struggling to stay on,  fading out after a certain amount of time, necessitating me turning on the switch again and again.
• Being in a position of fame (playing guitar for Mastodon, or playing football for the Gooners) and having no skills with which to pay the bills.
• Being in a safe environment, surrounded by monsters that I can control by telling them to stop, and then having them ignore that command and move towards me.
• Having a person or animal drowning nearby and I can't help them.
• Having a friend try to hurt/kill me but refusing to tell me why.
• Fighting in a sword-fight but being unwilling to hit my opponent as I actually don't really want to cut someone with a metal blade. It bloody hurts.

So yeah, my dreams are quite bleak and powerless generally, but that usually means I wake up pretty happy with my lot (beautiful family, no immediate peril) so don't pity me, buy my books! Is that what I'm supposed to say? I don't know. Have a good day, all of you.