There are sweet dreams, and there are nightmares.

For writers, they can be something else entirely.

Because I write mostly late at night and into the early morning hours, the story I’m working in is still fresh on my mind, and sometimes when I’m not sure where the story is going to go next, I put my head on the pillow with the express desire of working out what the next plot point is.

Most of the time, it works.  Sometimes, other ideas pop into my head.

The good thing is that I can use that time just before going to sleep to review what I have written and where it can go.  The real problem with that process is that I sometimes forget what I came up with when I wake up the next morning.

This is aside from the fact that I have been known to have nightmares, things from a past life that I’ve tried very hard to repress.  These are not the sort of dreams that fuel stories, but can lead to becoming an activist to prevent it from happening to others.

Not everyone has suffered in such a manner.

Then there are the dreams, not that there are many and those that I remember are quite weird, and sometimes when I could have a dream interpreter, I just don’t get how or why they happened. 

Or perhaps I should be questioning the interpretation.

What I would seriously like is to be able to drop back into a particular period and actually observe what it was like.  A story I am writing goes back to 1928. In London, I’m catching the night version of the Flying Scotsman, and it’s difficult because there aren’t many photographs or diaries from those who travelled back then.

I can imagine, but it’s not the same as being there.

There is another kind of dream I have had, and, to be honest, it was scary because it felt so real.  I went back in time, I don’t know how far back it had to be, 1700s or 1800s, a small cabin, sleeping in a bed near the kitchen, in a hut with no rooms. 

Could it be something to do with reincarnation, and I was dreaming of being back there in a previous life?  I know now for a fact our forbears lived in the country in the late 1800s, but before that, in Dorset, England, in villages, so it is quite possible they could have been there then.

It’s only happened twice, but it was very real.