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d rea m

The human mind, like the universe itself, contains the seeds of many worlds. Loren Eiseley

introduction
As the first of five stages, Dream becomes the royal road to story. In the opening chapter, youll learn why you need to permit yourself to dream so that you can generate an idea that matters to you over time what we call your stickiest idea. Youll prepare yourself to draft by undertaking the primary objective of the Dream stage when you cultivate that idea and define your story. Youll bring your dreams down to earth by mentally sorting through and noting down elemental decisions about plot, character, story world, and setting. As you get to Know thyself, youll become more capable of recognizing whether your creative process actually serves you and how to revise it if it doesnt. To that end, we recommend dreaming in dialogue a simple conversational technique that reveals the perceptive questioner within yourself. This technique may help you identify your ideal reader and genre and connect with the appropriate audience for your work. You can test the extent to which your essential story elements have come together by formulating a What If question. And, when you dream on deadline, youll develop a new perspective on the constraints that make writing challenging but also enable you to turn your dreams into stories.

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dream a little dream


I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Albert Einstein

When we dream, whether asleep or fully awake, we open ourselves to other worlds, and our dreams point us toward unexpected places, like a wardrobe that opens onto a magical land. And yet, we must dream with drafting in mind in order to make story possible. In our daily lives, we tell stories of fact and fiction for a wider audience than ever before. So theres no task more essential to us than dreaming, or the cultivation of ideas, a pursuit long venerated by the sages. Socrates reminded young Athenians that wisdom begins in wonder. Ralph Waldo Emerson might have been talking about dreaming in describing happiness as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you. In other words, wanting to tell good stories means first acknowledging that its part of your work to make time for quiet

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dream

sitting, for wondering at the world, for dreaming. But dont confuse the first stage with some nebulous trance or another purely receptive realm. The Dream stage calls for true discipline not the knitted brow or other bodily tension that we falsely associate with discipline but a fusion of purpose with action. Worries will fill every available moment if allowed. Dont yield to them. Do you long to create something of your own? Then make time to relax deeply into Dream. Set your mind loose to roam when youre stuck in traffic, for instance, or in the shower, cooking, or eating lunch at your desk. Let waves of ideas and images break over you. Every now and then, youll connect with a sticky idea, the tightly coiled germ Do you long of a personally meaningful story poised to to create something of your own? Then make expand dramatically not a blackbird, for instance, but Paul McCartneys Blackbird; time to relax deeply not just any alien but Steven Spielbergs E.T.; into Dream. not a room but Emma Donoghues impregnable Room; and not the thirteenth-century Chinese emperor but Samuel Taylor Coleridges Kubla Khan. In 1797, Coleridge woke from an opium-laced dream itself influenced by some pleasure reading hed done the night before and rushed to his desk. He managed to set down two to three hundred lines of his famed epic poem with a distinct recollection of the whole before a visitors interruption caused him to forget the remaining lines. In that visitor, we recognize the intrusion of critical judgment, which can undermine inspiration when it comes into play too early, snipping the buds of flowers merely because they have not yet bloomed. Dreaming calls for patience and trust. It offers abundant rewards but dont look to it for rules or guidelines. According to theater lore, on making his exit following one nights

dream a little dream

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performance, Laurence Olivier strode directly into his dressing room and slammed the door. A friend knocked and said, Larry, why are you so upset? That was one of the great performances of your career! Yes, cried the actor, but I dont know how I did it! Olivier didnt need to know how. Neither do you. You only need to set out in the direction determined by your imagination. Move forward with a whole heart and a smooth brow, trusting that a guide will come forth to meet you.

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