I was at a preview screening of “The Fourth Kind” Tuesday night and it scared the hell out of me. Wait, actually, I think I scared the hell out of myself. You see, I have this thing called an imagination, which takes whatever I see before me or think I see and turns up the volume about 100 decibels.
It’s annoying, really. That imagination leads to many sleepless nights when I my brain just will not shut off. BUT as most writers will tell you, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That imagination is what helps us do what we do.
I tell writers all the time that no one can tell a story the way they do. Not only will it be in their voice, but also from their imagination. My son, and his new girlfriend, were with me. They agreed the film was creepy, but the way the saw it was in a different way than I did.
I refuse to spoil anything, but suffice to say, the movie is open to interpretation. As is anything you write. Think about it. What we do is art. It is open to interpretation. People can view it from whatever prism of experience they have.
That prism of experience holds true for the writer/artist too. Everything that has gone before and made us what we are today, comes out on that page. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked through my personal issues with a book and all of that came from life experience. Many times I didn’t even know I was doing it at the time.
I could tell you to all sit down and write a story about a lonely ghost in a New Orleans mansion and each and everyone of you would come up with some different. It would be different in tone, style pacing and your imagination is what would bring it to life.
I don’t know about you, but I dream — a lot. I have vivid dreams. Sometimes they are scary, happy, or sexy. When I can I write them down. If I’m in the middle of a book, I mean hard core in the trenches, I dream my books. I have to make sure that I always have a notebook by the bed to write down scenes or notes about the characters, because they talk to me in my dreams.
Do you dream?
Have you ever had a dream about aliens?
I have. I think I was about 11, and I was so scared, because it felt real, that I slept on the end of my parents bed the next three nights. To this day I can remember the weird drilling sound. A kind of hazy light and weird things touching me. I was afraid to open my eyes, when I did I bolted from the bed to the hallway (that was a bit of a leap) and to my poor parents’ bed.
Now, part of that was I was an only child and slept by myself. I didn’t have a sibling to share scary nights with, and my imagination, which serves me well now, was always in over drive back then too. But someone who had a big sister or brother might not have the same experiences.
It’s funny though, most of my dearest friends are afraid of scary movies too. I have to rely on my kids to go with me. Of course, many of those friends are also writers with wild imaginations. 
So how about you? Do you dream? Have you ever had a dream that felt so real you thought you actually lived it? What about de ja vu? Have you ever scared yourself silly? Tell me, I want to know.
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Right there with you on the dreams and overly vivid imagination. I’ve learned to be very careful about what I expose myself to, because of the impact I know it’ll have. It’s the downside to having the ability to vividly imagine something, and then write it down.
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Charlene, I’m with you. That’s one of the reasons I try not to see the scary movies if at all possible. BUT sometimes I just can’t get out of it.
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Dreams are a very major occurence in my life. Very vivid, very real, very action packed. And generally the same concept every night of my life. I have this weird thing going on with dreams…always full of 1000’s of people, from all points of my life, big crowds. I’m always stressed and driving somewhere, which can start as a car, turn into a boat, a bicycle, even an airplane and once a spaceship. It usually morphs into different things, and no matter where it is, the same Dr. Suess-type roads give me the same choices, and I have to avoid exiting to the same horrific bridge. I hate that bridge. There is always travel, always water…sometimes scuba diving in it, sometimes a giant wave coming. And many many times there are tornadoes, multiples of them. Oh, and houses that all connect together and you can climb through windows that lead to new ones.
And for some reason, giant bathrooms with open toilets (LOL!) and I’m struggling to find privacy.
As weird as all this is… I found out last year (just last year) that one of my brothers has this exact same set of recurring activity. Freaked me out a little.
I’ve even thought of starting a dream blog…to see if anyone else is as weird as I am!
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OMG, I have those same bathroom dreams. I can’t find privacy. We need someone to tell us what that means!
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Those bathroom dreams, where you can’t find privacy, or sometimes the bathroom is too grody to use, mean your bladder is full. It’s time to wake up and go find a real bathroom.
I have dreamed some really strange locations for toilets during my subconscious search for a place to pee.
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I frequently have these dreams where I can’t do the simplest thing. If I have to dial a number on the phone(the most frequent dream) I try over and over to dial it and continue to get it wrong.
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Lisa I have that dream too. Like it’s a number you know, but you can’t dial it right to save your life.
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I call these “airport dreams”, because at the time in my life when i first started having them they were all about airports. I almost never got on any actual planes in these dreams; mostly i was trying to get to the airport, across the airport, or to a connecting flight at a different airport. and i’d often have to jog (in my underwear) to get there. i’d always be running late, and be sure i was going to miss whatever connection i was trying to make, and when i got there i’d learn that not only didn’t i miss it, but i wasn’t done yet.
i only remember actually getting to the plane once, and in that case, the plane looked a lot more like a charter bus from the inside.
since then they’ve changed, and merged with the ‘back in school’ dreams. (you know, the ones where you find yourself back in 2nd grade and you have all these assignments you didn’t know about….) several years back they started revolving around shopping malls and movie theaters. the running theme was that there was always someplace i was supposed to be, and i couldn’t seem to make any progress getting there.
i only rarely have nightmares anymore. when i do, it’s usually more a matter of being annoyed than afraid: I have dreams where I have to accomplish something excruciatingly boring, and I spend what feels like hours in the dream’s time trying to do that thing.
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I have always been a vivid dreamer, and because of that, I am also very cautious about what I let in. Often my dreams take the story I’ve read or seen and continues it – valuable for a writer, but if injudicious about input, can be more than disturbing!
My WIP started from listening to a single band’s work over a 10 year period, lyricly and then a series of wild dreams began of children. Within about a week, I realized it was backstory for one of the characters I’d been playing with, and I had a trilogy on my hands! Best genesis I’ve ever had, most sustainable story, etc.
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Stace, good for you!
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Stace, good for you on the WIP.
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I’m always scaring myself silly… because, like you, I have a wild imagination. Although, sometimes it’s fun to scare myself. Like when I go to a haunted house, and no matter how many times I tell myself it’s all fake, I’m still so scared that I close my eyes, head down, through the whole thing, lol.
Although, when I have my scary dreams, like I did about a month ago, it’s not always a good thing 
I had vivid dreams of being chased, by different people or things in each dream, and having them try to kill me. I know it was probably stress, but having those dreams just took so much energy out of me.
As for dreams, I’m one of the fortunate ones that has a dream every night and for the most part, can remember it
There are times in my dream that I try and take control, because I’ll know I’m dreaming, but it doesn’t always work. Ooh, the fun thing is when I’m not really me in my dreams. I’ve been different people… or sometimes it’s like I’m a camera filming the whole thing
I do have to be careful of what I watch or read before I head to bed… once watched The Shining and fell asleep in the middle of… let’s just say that was not a good experience.
Oh, and I’ve also had episodes of sleep paralysis… omg, it’s just awful. These are accompanied with feelings that demons or evil is nearby. After the first few episodes, I looked it up and figured out I wasn’t crazy, lol, so I try and calm myself. Though, it can be pretty hard at times. Especially when hallucinations are common with these episodes.
Sorry, I think I’m blabbing on…
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Ali,
I have episodes of sleep paralysis. It is horrible
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Isn’t it, though. My step-mom honestly thinks I’m being visited by demons *sigh*
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Sleep paralysis… yes, I’ve had that too. And unfortunately, in my dream, or maybe it wasn’t a dream, my recently dead great grandmother was there. I was 16, and when I could finally move I went and got my mom and made her come sleep in my bed.
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I remember having a horrible dream the first night in my dorm room. I was 17 and away from home for the first time besides camp and such. I dreamed that this man came out of the wall to kill me. He was dressed in construction gear and kept repeating “it’s you, you’re the one” I didn’t sleep in my room for weeks because the campus was full and I couldn’t be transferred to another room. I would have that dream everytime I slept in my room, it was HORRIBLE. I could feel him covering my nose and mouth to suffocate me. Few months later, we had an historian come to our campus to talk about “interesting” stories and found that a man was killed while building my hall and was believed to have murdered his wife and child by suffocating them. I never slept in that hall again. too freaky.
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You’re scary dream is probably going to give me nightmares tonight! That is so FREAKY!
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Candace: Thank you for your thought-provoking post. I must comment on several of the ideas you brought up.
Scary movies: I don’t care for them. There’s enough to scare me in real life. The news provides me with my fill of horror, and then some.
Your statement “What we do is art. It is open to interpretation.” Same is true of reality. Shouldn’t be, but it is.
“Everything that has gone before and made us what we are today, comes out on that page.” That’s true whether we want it to be true or not. And whether we realize it or not.
Dreams: I very rarely remember my dreams, assuming I have them. Even then, they’re just bits and pieces, not whole narratives.
Aliens: It’d be nice if we Earthlings weren’t alone in the universe. But unless and until science comes up with proof of extraterrestrial life, the only aliens I believe in are the kind who have green cards. Or should.
Deja vu: I believe in reincarnation, but I’m pretty skeptical of those who claim they remember past lives. Your memory dies when your brain dies. The only baggage you carry with you is your karma. That’s my take on it, anyhow.
Finally, I think an overactive imagination is an occupational hazard for creative writers. But unlike most mental dysfunctions, this is one we can turn into money!
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LOL. You are right about interpreting reality. I think we all live in our own realities, and it’s funny sometimes, for me at least, to listen to how other people see me. Or interpret my reality.
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I have always dreamed a lot. In fact I have a dream(book) in my head that I take out as I get ready to go to sleep at night and plot a few pages or paragraphs in it as I unwind at night and get ready to go to sleep. I often dream several chapters at night and the book progresses in some wild directions. This was something I started doing 30 years ago to get rid of stress and allow myself to go to sleep without sleeping aids. At this time the book is probably 10,000 pages +, but I can often drop off to sleep in less than 5 minutes.
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I can’t watch scary movies because my subconscious will not let them go. We’re talking weeks of fear. Same goes with sad movies. Can’t let it go, so I avoid them.
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Sometimes I’m awake enough to open my eyes and talk but still asleep. It’s not as bad as it used to be but my husband used to tell me the next morning that I was sitting up and talking again. Or that I woke him up to talk to him about the grocery list that included socks and a tire. It hardly ever happens these days though.
A period of bad dreams for me as when I was on anti-depressants. Man, those were some freaky dreams and I would cry in my sleep but couldn’t wake up unless Hubby did it for me. Yuck!
Creepiest times were when I lived in this little house with my parents in my late teens and often saw a young boy in an old fashioned sleeping shirt standing next to my bed watching me. Sometimes I talked to him but he would just keep on watching. Brown straight hair and big brown eyes, pale with freckles. He came many times and was always the same, only in that house. Creepy! I’m creeped out all over again just writing about it. This is why I can’t see scary movies – they make me upset for weeks! Plus, even the trailer for Paranormal Activity is enough to freak me out because the woman just stands next to the bed and watches the guy sleep…Just like the boy used to do to me.
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Two dreams that I still remember vividly from childhood.
1) Running along this street in front of the Alcoa plant near my house with boulders falling around me. I have no idea why they were falling.
2) I was probably too young when I saw the movie Critters. Many times I dreamed that I was running through that house hunting them. I guess that was better than them hunting me!
Both of these dreams repeated many times. I think I got past it when I realized I was dreaming and changed the outcome.
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so i also watched the movie the fourth kind. i’m also a writer. i know exactly what you mean about over active imaginations. sometimes i enjoy that. i don’t know if that’s weird. however, the alien thing is freaky and i’m more of a believer in everything except reality if that makes sense. reality’s boring. so last night i was looking at this UFO thing of course, torturing myself. i don’t normally dream because (go figure) i have to take anxiety meds. i guess i scared myself into a night of exhaustion. got no sleep and when i did sleep i dreamed there was a demonic alien thing stalking me. holding me captive. when i woke, i could hear this strange whistling sound that went on and on. i could not figure out what could be making the sound and didn’t want to exactly get up and investigate. and for some reason my cat was intent on knocking everything off the shelves last night. or i hope it was her. ha. my heat wouldn’t go off. the house is still so hot from that. i dreamed that it zapped my cellphone battery. i went to bed, checked my cell first as always. it was charged. it was dead when i woke, lol. i dreamed i tried to run out to my car. shined a flashlight in the woods and it was there. the black evil alien thingy. later it was cooking dinner in my backwards house. when i do dream and dream about this house the kitchen will be where the living room is and vice versa. like a reflection maybe. long story short, that movie freaked me out. i’m not easily freaked out. unlike other people i do wallow a bit in those emotions others dread because i’m a writer of horror and gore and all that wonderfulness. i even enjoy nightmares (when i scarcely have them) because they’re exciting like a living horror movie. i’ve always had strange supernatural experiences. it’s nothing new. but aliens have the power to scare the crap out of me. serial killers on the other hand… do not. i read somewhere that “real” aliens, ha, feed off of fear, live here in coalition with our gov. as reptilians. (someone has a bigger imagination than me.) but with writers mentality this stuff begins to manifest itself into our reality if we choose to believe. i think i accidentally do. what we give power has power. what we give evil is evil. i haven’t seen the sunshine for two weeks. begins to wear at you. i’m not sure what is going on with the weather, but that also strikes up my imagination. like maybe the gov. is doing something with the weather patterns. we already know they do indeed have artificial rain and clouds. did i mention i have a huge imagination? ack!