Do you remember sitting in the back seat of your parents’ car when you were a kid, driving somewhere, head phones on, music blaring, scenery flowing by, as your mind roamed from idea to idea? That feeling of being so close to the world and yet so far away, of being trapped in a vehicle while your brain flies free…I call that being In The Dreaming. And for me, it’s a vital part of being a writer. Without a certain amount of time spent In The Dreaming, I can’t be creative. I don’t need the vehicle or the music anymore. But I do need that disconnected and completely real sensation of being absolutely open to the muse and whatever she may bring.

I’ve missed being In The Dreaming lately. I’ve been working on really cool stuff and having a blast.  I love my life right now. But I do miss being off kilter, in the creative space, In The Dreaming. I have faith, though. Life will come around again and I will be back there soon.

Television is a good way to get In The Dreaming for me, weirdly enough. I had the idea for one of my first completed short stories while watching a rerun of a black-and-white sitcom from the 50s. It came from a toss away line about teen angst and had nothing to do with the plot of the show, but when the main character uttered those whiny words, my 18-year-old mind started churning. It produced a pretty bad tale, as Algis Budrys kindly told me when I submitted it to his magazine,  but that hasn’t stopped me from watching TV with my brain half enthralled by the flickering screen and half wide open to whatever crazy fiction it might come up with as a result of the other half being distracted. It’s a Zen thing. Sort of. Ok, not really.

Let me know how you get into the creative zone in the comments. Because, like telling stories of finding huge spiders in the house and my friend Eric talking about celebrities dying, contemplating being In The Dreaming usually makes it come to pass. Here’s hoping this blog will make that happen.