In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King writes about the source of his book, Misery.  He fell asleep on a plane and woke up from a dream with the situation for his novel.  He transferred it to a cocktail napkin and then during a sleepless night he wandered down to the main desk at his London hotel and asked for a quiet space to write.  The Brown Hotel offered him the desk where Rudyard Kipling wrote and died.  That dream planted a seed.  He paid attention and the rest is history.  A friend who's a best selling novelist told me that she dreamed the last scene to one of her books before it took full form.  "I wrote the whole book to that last scene," she says. 

 

Dreams are fertile ground for the creative spirit.  They serve up scenes or situations.  They propose solutions to challenges and they urge us to persevere even when we feel dejected and rejected.  In a recent dream, I'm helping a child learn to structure words.  She's my creative baby, my creative self.  Working with her required great patience, as working with any child might.  In the dream, I wanted to take a break, but kept on working to draw the words out of her.  I knew it meant to nurture my creative child and keep on writing though I'd lost some of the taste for it.  Discipline and determination will get the words into a polished form. 

 

In another dream someone handed me a salt grinder.  When I turned the grinder, huge, indigestible chunks of salt fell onto my plate.  I opened the top to put the salt back in it.  Inside the grinder I found a kinfe, fork and a pen.   I knew when I woke up that the process of rewriting (which isn't nearly as fun as drafting) will make the work palatable.  Without doing the grinding (rewriting and polishing), no one will consume my book or find nourishment in it. 

 

Do your dreams help you in writing and life?  I would love to hear some of your stories. 

 

copyright: Debra Moffitt-Leslie, April 2009 www.debramoffitt.com

 

Most writers look for good places to submit their material, but many of the interesting anthologies, contests and calls for workshop proposals are little publicized.  Here are a few places that may be of interest to writers.  At the International Women Writers Guild in NYC last weekend, I met two editors collecting stories for their anthology, LifeBytes...Real Stories of Online Dating."  They plan to follow it up with a series of LifeBytes books.  They want to know about your online dating stories and romantic cyber adventures.  For complete submission guidlines go to www.lifebytesbook.com

 

For Southern women or writers who focus on the South, Berry College holds an annual Southern Women Writers Conference.  The rolling campus dotted with trees and strolling deer makes an idyllic setting and provides a good opportunity to network with other writers.  While their call for presenters and writes just closed, an Emerging Writers Contest is open until June 15th.  It awards prizes in fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  For more information and registration visit www.berry.edu/swwc2009 

 

IWWG member, B. Lynn Goodwin of Danville, CA is seeking flash fiction, memoir and creative non-fiction that "mesmerizes the reader in 750 words or less" for the Fourth Annual Flash Prose Contest of Writer's Advice.  Entry fee is $10 and first prize will be $150.  Find out more at:  www.writeradvice.com

 

And just a quick reminder for those in the Charlotte area.  Journey into the Writer's Secret Garden II will debut on May 6th at the Cornwell Center at 6:30 pm.  This workshop is a follow up to the March series where we explored writing from sacred space, symbols and dreams as seeds for story and memoir, meditation and silence.  Part II came about thanks to the urging of several of the participants who wanted to continue the journey.  At the end of the first workshop we pulished a literary journal of participants' work and plan to do this again.  For more information contact the Cornwell Center at 704 927 0774 or contact John Bambach at jbambach@mpbconline.org.

 

Keep an eye out for more about the upcoming Writing and Wellness Connections Conference to take place in Atlanta.  Founder, Dr. John Evans, will be requesting proposals and papers for the event that brings together fiction, memoir and creative non-fiction writers and healthcare professionals.  While the latest information isn't up yet, this is the link.    http://www.wellnessandwritingconnections.com/  Dr. Evans plans to hold the next conference in spring, 2010

 

Copyright: Debra Moffitt Leslie, April 2009  www.debramoffitt.com