Dream writing

Dreaming as literary inspiration

This article was written as a contribution to the Soaring Twenties (STSC) Symposium. This month’s Symposium theme is “Dreams.” The STSC is a group of creatives who write, paint, versify and experiment their way through life. Join us!

dreams - generated by Substack’s image generation thing

Some people keep a notebook by their bed in case they have a bright idea in the middle of the night. Others keep a notebook by their bed so they can write down their dream before they forget it. George Perec, the Oulipian¹ writer, went a stage further: he not only recorded his dreams — he published them.

I’ve always wondered about the efficacy of writing down one’s dreams. It seems to me that since a feature of dreams is that they start to evaporate as soon as they come into contact with the air of wakefulness, perhaps they are designed to behave in that manner. Maybe we’re not meant to remember them. Still, if it helps you to write down your dreams, go for it. But publishing them? That seems rather a step too far: who knows what you might reveal about yourself?

Perec published his dreams in a book called La boutique obscure : 124 dreams, translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker. I haven’t read the book yet, but intend to: a request to my library has just been submitted.

There’s an interesting review in Words Without Borders. It cites Perec as writing:

“I thought I was recording the dreams I was having. I have realized that it was not long before I began having dreams only in order to write them.”

This strikes me as a variation of one of the problems of scientific observation, especially at the quantum level. As soon as you start to observe something, you change the nature of what your observing. That’s true not only in science, of course.

For me there are several problems associated with recording one’s dreams with the intention of turning them into a book.

Firstly, you have to remember them accurately. Otherwise, the dream you record isn’t the dream you actually had.

Secondly, presumably you might want to edit them, or decide not to write them down at all, if they were embarrassing.

Thirdly, you would need to write them up well. Just because you found a dream to be utterly fascinating doesn’t mean that anyone else would. On a more general level, many people claim to have a book inside them and quite frankly, given most people’s story-telling skills, that’s precisely where the book should stay: inside them². As soon as you start to write them in a way to make them read better in some way, you introduce an element of artificiality. As it happens, I think this is the challenge with all nonfiction writing: how far is it permissible to edit conversations, sequence or setting? At what point does the writing technique change the balance between nonfiction and fiction?

Finally, how real are dreams anyway, even on their own terms? A couple of times in my life I’ve had the experience of thinking, in my dream, “This is a nice dream but I’m going to have to wake up soon.” That suggests to me that dreams may be the result of random electrical impulses firing off in my brain.

I can’t see myself publishing my dreams any time soon. However, if I ever dream a novel, a character, or a wonderful premise for a series of articles or a nonfiction book, you may be certain that I will be putting pen to paper straight away!

1. The Oulipo is a French writing movement that advocates the use of constraints. I’ve written a lot about it. Here’s a round-up of three collections of Oulipian works. The Penguin book is especially good, and is also still readily available.

2. I apologise if I sound rather snobbish, but I can’t tell you the number of times people have said to me: “Oh, so you’re a writer. Yes, I’m going to write a book one of these days, once I’ve retired, or when the kids have grown up, or…”. Listen, mate. I’ve spent years, decades, trying to be the best writer I can be, so don’t insult me by suggesting that anyone can do it once they’ve got a bit of time on their hands, or finished doing the more important things in their life. Rant over!