Sleep on it!

Sandra Parshall

Chapter 12 was giving me fits. Something was wrong with it, but what? I couldn’t figure it out while sitting at my computer, staring at the stubborn words on the screen. I knew the answer lay hidden in my head somewhere, if only I could persuade my subconscious to cough it up. So I did what I’ve often done: I asked my brain to solve the problem while the rest of me slept.

The next morning I woke up knowing how to fix the chapter.

I’m a great believer in the power of both dreams and the unconscious. My first published novel, The Heat of the Moon, originated with a dream in which I saw, as if I were standing nearby and watching, two little girls clinging to each other during a storm. (I gave the same dream to my protagonist, Rachel Goddard, to help her find the truth about her family.)

Most of the time, though, my unconscious mind cuts a clear path through the tangled thicket of plot I’ve created. Before I fall asleep, I think about what I need to figure out, and when I wake the answer is usually waiting. Sometimes I will remember a fragment of a dream involving my characters. If nothing helpful comes to me, I start asking whether that chapter or scene should be removed from the book altogether. The answer is usually yes.

Because I’ve done this successfully for so long, I was especially intrigued by an article in Scientific American Mind about how to train your brain to solve problems through dreams. The author, psychologist Dierdre Barrett, describes decades of research proving that our brains are hard at work while our bodies sleep. Scans of the brain areas that are active during dreaming (or REM–rapid eye movement–sleep) show we have many more dreams than we will ever remember. Parts of the brain associated with visual imagery and emotion become more active in REM sleep than when we’re awake, while the part of the cortex that censors our thoughts and actions takes a rest. We consolidate new learning and memories during REM sleep. And we can solve problems and come up with new ideas while asleep.

In her research, Barrett found that many professionals, including artists and writers, credit dreams with improving their work. Nobel Prizes in science have resulted from dreams. Friedrich August Kekule discovered the structure of benzene through a dream. Dmitry Mendeleyev’s layout of the periodic table of the elements was inspired by a dream. Architect Solange Fabiao’s design for the Museum of Ocean and Surf in Biarritz came from a dream. So don’t scoff at the idea that your mind might solve problems and generate creative new ideas while you’re asleep.

Barrett suggests taking these steps to train your brain to work on specific problems at night:

1. Write down the problem, briefly and concisely.

2. Think about the problem for a few minutes before going to bed.

3. In bed, visualize the problem as a concrete image if you can (not always possible, but this often yields the best results).

4. Tell yourself to dream about the problem.

5. When you wake, lie in bed quietly and allow your dreams to come back to you.

Soon the phrase “sleep on it” will have a whole new meaning for you.

I've got to know the ending!

Elizabeth Zelvin

When I was a kid, my parents frequently invited company for dinner. They had interesting friends. Long past our bedtimes, my sister and I used to sneak halfway down the stairs and hang over the banister so we could hear the conversation. This was back in the days before conversation became a spectator sport, something celebrities did on televised talk shows while everybody else just listened. (To this day, I don’t watch talk shows. When I hear a good conversation, I want to participate.)

My father was a wonderful raconteur, as were some of their friends. They would tell stories—extended jokes that drew us in till we could hardly wait to hear the punch line. And then they would tell the punch line in Yiddish! All the adults would howl with laughter. It always sounded hilarious, since Yiddish is an innately comical language to the anglophone ear. Mind you, neither of my parents spoke Yiddish. My father’s native language was Russian, my mother’s Hungarian. But everybody always understood the punch line—except us. “What does it mean? What does it mean?” we would clamor. They would invariably reply, “It’s untranslatable!”

This intensely frustrating experience left me with an imperative need to know the ending of any story. In mysteries, the ending is of crucial importance. In fact, it’s what distinguishes them from most literary novels. They start with a setup: a crime is committed, but we’re missing some key information: we don’t know whodunit. Or in a thriller, something will happen if it isn’t stopped, and it’s a race with the clock—or an obstacle course—to prevent disaster. We keep reading—often long past our bedtimes—to find out how they’ll end.

I had a thriller-like dream last night. It took place in West Africa, in a country that might have been Burkina Faso, just north of Côte d’Ivoire where I lived in the Sixties as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In the dream, I was part of a group of people, black and white, who loved Africa and had spent years there helping the surrounding countries get rid of oppressors. We had just discovered that some hidden airports in the bush were international airports. At first we thought they were brand new and couldn’t understand why the Africans hadn’t told us about them. Then we realized they’d been there all along. In the dream, this meant that once they’d finished ousting the oppressors with our help, they planned to get rid of us as well. We were outraged. Each of us talked in turn about how betrayed we felt. I gave quite a speech—probably out loud, as my husband swears I often do while dreaming.

We knew we had to leave at once, before our enemies arrived. A plane was waiting. As we began to board, a plane or helicopter landed. Armed men rushed out and headed toward us. We tried frantically to get everybody into the plane. As they reached us, we all made it on board, but we still had to take off before they could attack. Through a kind of transparent bubble, we could see them aiming their weapons at us.

At that moment, my husband woke me up. “You were having a nightmare,” he said. I was furious. “No, I wasn’t. Why did you wake me?” “You were,” he insisted. “You were saying, ‘Please don’t shoot us.” “I was not! I was saying, ‘Please don’t hurt us.’ We just wanted them to let us leave.” I tried to explain the dream, not doing it very well since I tend not to remember my dreams in any detail. He couldn’t understand why I thought it wasn’t a nightmare. But it wasn’t. I wasn’t scared, or at least not with the dread or terror that characterize nightmares. What I felt was more of a sense of intense urgency. I certainly didn’t want to be rescued at that moment. I wanted to know if we made it into the air before they started shooting. Dammit, I wanted to know the ending!

I can't???

By Lonnie Cruse

Ever notice where some birds build their nests? I don't mean in bird houses, which of course many do. Or trees, even though they build there too. I'm talking about birds building nests inside the letters of the huge signs over grocery stores, but usually in the O or the E, which are nicely rounded, because V or K probably isn't all that comfortable.

Or they build on bridges, in the upper spans where most humans would be terrified to sit/stand. And you can see them working away as you whiz by, or hear them chirping merrily as you enter the store. I guess what amazes me about this is that the birds don't know they aren't supposed to be there, doing what they're doing. So they just do it.

Sometimes we humans allow ourselves be kept from trying to reach our dreams, from trying to "fly," because of the opinions of others. Well meaning friends telling us we can't do what we want to do. They say we don't have the talent, smarts, experience, courage, whatever. . .and sadly, we buy into it.

Is there something you've always wanted to try but didn't think you could succeed? Something not illegal, imoral, or fattening, of course! Then why not try it? Spread your wings and fly, or build your nest someplace totally strange and scary. Reach for your dream. And be sure to hang onto that railing. Don't let the wind blow you off the bridge!

Don't think you know how? Take writing, for instance. Love a certain author's writing but think you could never be that good? Most likely you won't, and neither will I ever be that good, but we can read that author's work with an eye to what makes it so great: how are the scenes are set, how is humor or suspense or romance sprinkled in (because likely the author isn't hitting the reader over the head with it, but sliding it in, here and there, in appropriate places.) How does the author let the reader come to know the characters? By dumping page after page of information that puts us to sleep or by subtle hints here and there that makes the reader think: "Ahah! That's why..." How does the writer describe the setting or the weather? Figure out what works for that author and learn how to do it for yourself. There are a lot of good stories out there, and many of them just need a bit of spit and polish to become GREAT stories.

Is there a novel buried somewhere inside you? Why not build a nest at your desk and write it? And let us know, here at Poe's Daughters, when it's published.