source of inspiration

Everybody knows that Twilight came to Stephenie Meyer in a dream, but don’t discount dreams as a source of inspiration just because it seems so clicheed! Just the other day, I dreamed that I was in Las Vegas and had parked my car in a vast multistory underground garage. When I went to pick it up, lo and behold my car was gone! It had been stolen!

Luckily, in my dream, I overheard the thieves talking very nearby. They were two people: a youngish man with long dirty blond hair wearing a brown raincoat, and another person whose appearance I don’t entirely recall but had curly brown hair. They fully admitted they’d stolen my car, along with something else … my heart, which had been stored in a jar.

The thieves suddenly ran away, vanishing instantly! The hotel manager, though, was at my side and guaranteed that he would catch them, since they had security guards posted all over the place.

Now, I don’t know if your dreams are as crazy as mine, but if they’re not, there’s one way to make them more interesting. Start writing them down. I did this once, and I began to remember so many of my dreams that it was frankly overwhelming. I stopped writing them down, but these days I still remember them. Sometimes they’re full of anxiety, and those aren’t necessarily useful for inspiration, but every once in a while I’ll have a dream that is SO FREAKING AMAZING that I run out of bed and write it down right away. One of those dreams gave birth to my next book, Adaptation.