To Want, To Dream, To Create
Two new writing exercises to reveal yourself to yourself and wake up your language, too
Just got back from AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Centers conference) in LA, and so very glad to be home. Sorry I could not host a write-in today as I had planned—our flight from LA was delayed and it was almost midnight MPLS time when we finally tumbled into our house. Plus, I teach writing for public health on Mondays.
However, we will reschedule the write-in along with several more for spring—so watch for calendar updates!—and also, we have a salon coming up for founding members this Thursday, April 3, at 2 PM Central on Zoom. Link will be sent out Thursday morning, and we’ll have an open mic to celebrate the end of our Delights intensive! Billie and I can’t wait to hear you read your work!
Back to AWP. I was struck again, as I am every year, by concentration of so many dreams and so much desire all in one place. Some fifteen thousand writers, each and every one of them pulsing with some level of want and wish.
The dreams in the LA convention center were so thick you could have climbed atop them and curled up for a sweet little nap. And the desire was so radiant you could wrap it around your shoulders as a break against the wind.
Between the dreams and the desire, the atmosphere was totally dizzying.
It was also intensely inspiring. After all, both dreams and desire are such wonderful sources of material for a creative practice.
Dreams can be fluid and chaotic, move in unpredictable and even magical ways. Dreams aren’t nonfiction or fiction—they’re somewhere in between. The mood of a dream provides a wonderful container for creative writing.
As for desire … if you’ve been writing in the dark with me for awhile, then you know I am a student of desire, a student of the way desire and creativity intersect, and I have written about this time and again, like here and here and here and here.
I recognize desire as the life force of our creative work. And if desire is the the fuel that feeds our writing (hint: it is), then we must truly nurture our desire. We must open wide to the wanting. But to do that, we must first recognize our want, acknowledge it, greet it, and embrace it. We have to give it shape, substance, and texture. We have want to want.
But what, exactly, does it mean ... to want? What does it feel like, look like, sound like, smell like?
And what is the language of a dream? The shape of a dream? And dreams are governed by dream logic, too. You know how dream logic sounds:
In the dream, we were at my childhood home, except it was a boat, and in the back of the boat were some stairs that led to a library in Greece, which apparently I’d been to before, even though I’ve never been to Greece, and I knew I had to get back there, except when I made my way to the back of the boat, the stairs weren’t there.
And iIn Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, The BFG (big friendly giant), dreams can be caught and stored. As Good Book Mom explains it:
The primary thing the BFG does with his time is catch dreams. Dream Country is where the BFG uses his enormous ears to hear dreams when they originate. He has found purpose in catching dreams for little children, good dreams are called golden phizzwizards and nightmares are called trogglehumpers. The BFG says he’ll never release the nightmares, they’ll be trapped forever so they don’t scare children. At night, the BFG goes around different countries, using his dream trumpet to blow the good dreams into children’s bedrooms.
We would do well to open our enormous ears to hear when dreams originate, as well—especially our own. Allowing for this kind of unbound dream logic to guide our writing can lead us to unusual places—and yes, this is so even if we are writing nonfiction.
In celebration of AWP and the wants and wishes that abound there, I’m offering you two powerful, flexible writing exercises that can be portals to new projects (stories, essays, poems, scenes), or even serve as warm-ups for your writing on a regular basis. Practicing this kind of writing will help keep your language alive and pulsing, which is ultimately what we want.