Sleep On It!tag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose/2392007-05-06T05:55:43ZDreams: the Nocturnal MuseMovable Type Enterprise 1.02Introduction--The Committee of Sleeptag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.22122007-04-29T23:47:10Z2007-05-06T05:55:43Z “It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it” --John Steinbeck Since ancient times, dreams have inspired individuals in the arts, sciences, and...Lily Briscoe“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it” --John Steinbeck
Since ancient times, dreams have inspired individuals in the arts, sciences, and beyond to create, innovate, and develop new ideas. Although the link between dreams and creativity is still unclear, current research suggests that dreams are useful in making connections and developing unique images and metaphors—techniques that are especially valuable for creative writers. As a result, artists from all media can exploit the creative benefits of dreams. Creative writers can tap into their unconscious and become inspired by “sleeping on it.”
A caveat: Whether the dream content seems insightful or useless, a writer has to do the work of translating the dream language into written language. Much of the work of writing involves a process of revising, polishing, and cultivating an effective style—something that dreams unfortunately cannot do. Nevertheless, without an idea as a starting point, the writer does not have material to work with. This can result in the dreaded situation of “writer’s block.” Fortunately, by “sleeping on it,” writers can solve their creative problems and get unblocked
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The Little Peopletag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.22182007-04-28T00:05:33Z2007-05-06T09:39:54Z Robert Louis Stevenson was facing financial ruin when a dream inspired him to write The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He thought of his dream life as “a small theatre of the brain which we keep...Lily Briscoe
Robert Louis Stevenson was facing financial ruin when a dream inspired him to write The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He thought of his dream life as “a small theatre of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long.” In this theatre, the dream functions as the stage where images and scenes “echo in the chambers of the brain.”
In Stevenson’s imagination, the theatre of his brain is run by fairylike helpers whom he calls Brownies, or “Little People.” He claims that they “do one-half my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for myself.” In “A Chapter on Dreams,” from his travelogue Across the Plains, Stevenson reveals that two scenes in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were inspired by his dreams. Through a series of misfortunes and writer’s blocks, Stevenson found himself in financial straits. He knew that his only hope was to publish a new story:
“I had long been trying to write a story on this subject [Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde]. For two days I went about wracking my brains for a plot of any sort, and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and consciously."
Stevenson alludes to the scene where Jekyll, after being invited to a walk by Utterson, looks out of the window and becomes horrified. The origin of this scene came from a nightmare in which Stevenson was looking down from a window of a room and saw a big brown dog. The “hellish” beast caught flies with his paws and after eating them, looked up at the dreamer and winked at him. Stevenson was filled with terror at the behavior of the “devilish brown dog,” and it inspired Stevenson to create the persona of the evil Mr. Hyde.
Unfortunately, scientists have yet to discover a committee of Keebler Elves in the brain, but research has uncovered evidence that dreams may be useful in addressing and working through problems.
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Dream Incubationtag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.22132007-04-27T22:58:07Z2007-05-06T07:50:27Z “How often dreams have come to my assistance in the composition of my writings! They aided me to put my ideas in order and my style in harmony with my ideas; they have made me expunge certain expressions, and...Lily Briscoe“How often dreams have come to my assistance in the composition of my writings! They aided me to put my ideas in order and my style in harmony with my ideas; they have made me expunge certain expressions, and choose others . . . a god warned me in my sleep, censured my writings . . . brought me back to a natural style.” --Synesius of Cyrene from ancient Greece
Not only do dreams provide a rich reservoir of potential writing content, but they can also be instrumental in solving writers’ problems. But how and why it happens is another story. Many dream researchers theorize that the process of dream incubation is the key. Dream incubation has its origins in ancient times among many cultures. The method generally involved “the practice of going to a sacred place to sleep for the purpose of obtaining a useful dream from a god” (Garfield 44). Temples were erected solely for this purpose in ancient Greece, China, Egypt and other civilizations. Historians speculate that dream incubation was originally used for curing sterility and infertility. The tradition evolved to general problem solving like personal concerns and healing the sick. But is dream incubation really effective in solving problems? If so, can it be used for creative purposes?
Dr. Deirdre Barrett of Harvard Medical School conducted an experiment to study dream incubation and problem solving. She wanted to discover if subjects could use their dreams to solve personal problems. The 76 participants were asked to write down a “problem of personal relevance with recognizable solution(s).” Then they were instructed to follow dream incubation instructions nightly for a week, or until they thought they received a satisfactory answer to their problem. Nearly half of the participants recalled a dream that they believed was about their problem. Of those subjects, 70% percent felt that their problem was solved. Many of the perceived solutions were ones that dreamers had not consciously considered or thought of. The dreams addressed problems and solutions both metaphorically and literally. One of the findings was that those who incubated problems of a personal nature (like relationship problems and educational decisions) were more likely to believe that their problem had been solved than other participants who incubated academic problems.
Barrett’s study suggests that intense involvement with a subject is more likely to lead to a dream about that subject and that “dream interested persons incubating problems can often dream what they feel to be solutions of which they are not consciously aware.”
Barrett also points out that “the solutions seemed to be in line with the subjects’ waking abilities.” Thus, accomplished writers build on their talents; dreams do not make them complete literary geniuses overnight.
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REM--Making the Connectiontag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.22142007-04-25T23:00:46Z2007-05-06T07:52:33ZHow and why do dreams often seem to address waking concerns? How does the dreaming brain develop new ideas and solutions? Ernest Hartmann believes that the “nets of the mind,” the complex network of linked neurons on the cerebral cortex,...Lily Briscoe
Ernest Hartmann believes that the “nets of the mind,” the complex network of linked neurons on the cerebral cortex, are responsible for how new material and novel connections and associations are introduced during dreams:
The making of connections simultaneously smoothes out disturbances in the mind by
integrating new material . . . and also produces more and broader connections by weaving
in new material . . . . These new connections, or increased connections are what make
dreaming useful in problem solving, as well as in scientific and artistic creation (4).
It appears that during the 3-5 cycles of REM sleep, a period of atypical and unique dreams and an abundance of imagery and metaphor, could be instrumental in the making of new connections, and coming up with creative concepts.
Hartmann associates the REM state with a merging and “loosening of categories” and “thin boundaries” (90). To understand the creative value of the REM stage, researchers at Harvard Medical School conducted a study about problem solving and whether their subjects showed cognitive flexibility, the ability of coming up with less traditional, stereotypical answers and finding more unique solutions to problems. The dream researchers in the Harvard study regard cognitive flexibility as utilizing more “associative based mechanisms to form novel relationships such as those employed in problem solving and creative thinking” in contrast to the rigid, factual waking life (Walker et al. 317).
Sixteen college students were given four anagram tests throughout the night: before sleep, ten minutes into NREM sleep, ten minutes into REM sleep and thirty minutes after awakening (318-319). Their scores were tabulated and the researchers discovered that REM scores were 32% higher than the scores from NREM sleep (322). The study published in Cognitive Brain Research concluded that “the neurophysiology of REM sleep represents a brain state more amenable to flexible cognitive processing than NREM” (317). But why do artists and writers benefit from cognitive flexibility? The answer lies in the development of metaphor.
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REM--The Royal Road to Metaphortag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.23202007-04-24T22:56:32Z2007-05-06T09:21:01ZNot only is metaphor a major literary device, but it is crucial to how dreamers translate images and ideas into stories. Bert O. States considers metaphor as “the smallest and most salient unit of artistic or imaginative energy” (104). Taking...Lily Briscoe
Like Hartmann, States regards metaphor as a symbiosis of ideas. He calls metaphor “the cognitive fire that ignites when the brain rubs two different thoughts together” forming a “cognitive expansion of their combined possibilities on which future likenesses may be built” (105). Robert Stickgold’s view of cognitive flexibility is similar: “To be creative, you need a way to let those circuits float free and really be open to alternatives that you would normally overlook . . . Several features of REM sleep predispose the brain to this activity” (DeAngelis). However one describes it, metaphor is a powerful tool in any creative person’s arsenal.
Writers regularly employ metaphor so it seems possible that they may be more receptive to the metaphors they encounter in dreams. A study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience concurs with the theory of the enhancement of cognitive flexibility from REM sleep, but takes it a step further. They discovered that REM dreams can also unlock the secrets of metaphor. The study observed that “the bizarre and hyperassociative character of REM” affected subjects’ answers to semantic priming tests. Participants were awakened from NREM and REM sleep periods to take a series of word priming tasks. Subjects were shown a “prime” word, followed by a “target” word and were asked to determine how the target word was analogous to the prime word. For example, a strong prime would be “cat/kitten” or “light/dark”; a weaker prime would be “beach/summer” or “crime/gun.” The researchers also introduced pairs of words that had no semantic relationship, like “apple/roof” and “fork/baseball.” Nonsensical word pairs were also thrown into the mix.
The study showed that subjects who took the test shortly after REM sleep had slower responses to the stronger primes and had an easier and faster response to weaker primes. It seems like the participants transcended direct and logical thought to more complex and creative thought. “It’s as if the brain is preferentially searching out and activating weak associates, unexpected paths, instead of the obvious, normally strong associates,” observes Robert Stickgold, one of the researchers (qtd. in DeAngelis).
The results indicate that dreamers under the influence of REM sleep can develop unique and creative metaphors in waking life. By finding a connection between weak primes, writers can create vivid and original metaphors. Writers are constantly devising new ways of looking at things; often they assign significance and symbolic meaning to objects. A cognitively flexible writer uses free association to mine new ideas with confidence, not self-censure.
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Hypnagogic Dreamstag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.23212007-04-24T21:11:14Z2007-05-06T09:36:16Z“As soon as my head hit the pillow I started to drift off into that marginal place that you enter between wakefulness and dreams. I wasn’t out and yet I wasn’t fully awake—it’s that moment when your mind is just...Lily Briscoe“As soon as my head hit the pillow I started to drift off into that marginal place that you enter between wakefulness and dreams. I wasn’t out and yet I wasn’t fully awake—it’s that moment when your mind is just opening up—and I saw this image. Of sailors. They were Yankee sailors hauling something out of the jungle. It was in a crate” (120).
In Naomi Epel’s fascinating compilation of writers’ dreams in Writers Dreaming, Charles Johnson described how he felt that something was missing in the draft of the novel he was working on. As he fell asleep, Johnson experienced a hypnagogic dream that inspired him to write a scene that would provide the impetus for much of the dramatic action of the award-winning novel, Middle Passage.
Hypnagogia is a space of loose, less structured waking thought occurring as a dreamer drifts off to sleep, and right before he or she becomes fully awake (Hartmann 90).
These dreams can shed light on how inspiration may strike as we fall asleep or immediately after we awaken. During this stage, the dreamer is semi-conscious— half-awake, half-asleep as images flicker through the mind. During a hypnagogic hallucination, “some of the physiological mechanisms of REM sleep persist after they would normally shut down” (101). In one sense, hypnagogic hallucinations are the dreams closest to waking. Because of the intriguing implications of this dreamlike state, researchers have used it to help them understand dream images and problem solving. Research shows how hypnagogic images can improve mental activity and access memories and images for our use.
In the October 2000 issue of Science, researchers from Harvard Medical School published the results of a study about the role that the brain plays in hypnagogic images during sleep onset. Robert Stickgold and his colleagues taught twenty-seven participants to play the computer game Tetris. The subjects played the game for seven hours over a span of three days. Each night, they were awakened during three states: REM, NREM and the hypnagogic period at sleep onset. After each awakening, researchers prompted the subjects to record what they saw in their minds.
The findings were illuminating: the participants reported “intrusive, stereotypical, visual images of the game at sleep onset” (350). The hypnagogic images were strikingly similar in each dreamer—most dreamed of Tetris pieces, usually falling down a screen (351). Most importantly, the subjects increased their scores significantly. These results suggest that the residue from waking life is worked on in dreaming life and can be accessed by dreamers to improve their performance. This is especially true of an activity to which a dreamer devotes a lot of waking hours. Because of the intensive mental process of their work, writers may end up dreaming about their projects. They may dream about a character, setting, or emotion in the manuscript they are writing.
A hypnagogic state may help a writer think more creatively because they integrate characteristics of both unconscious and conscious activity. According to Dr. Deirdre Barrett of Harvard University, there are two modes of thinking: primary and secondary. Primary thinking involves the visual, intuitive, and emotional. Barrett associates this mode with the bizarre, illogical, and unnerving REM state. On the contrary, secondary thinking is logical, linear, and focused (87). Barrett asserts that hypnagogic dreams combine elements from both primary and secondary modes, creating a state of interaction and evaluation that is a catalyst for creativity.
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Writer's Blocktag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.22152007-04-22T23:08:54Z2007-05-06T09:33:59Z So you're blocked. . . But don't panic! Sleep on it. And get inspired by writers past and present who have let dreams be their muse. Dream Imagery and Metaphor Clive Barker, author of Abarat and Weaveworld, recalls dreaming...Lily Briscoe
So you're blocked. . . But don't panic! Sleep on it. And get inspired by writers past and present who have let dreams be their muse.
Dream Imagery and Metaphor
Clive Barker, author of Abarat and Weaveworld, recalls dreaming of a powerful image of strawberries at a Soho market: “the whole place was somehow sexualized by the smell and the sight of these strawberries” (Epel 33). The fruit peddlers sorted out the rotting strawberries from the good ones, and the overpowering stench conjured up a “visceral dark image.” Fusing strawberries and sex into a powerful, sensuous metaphor, Barker was inspired to write “The Age of Desire.” The short story is about a man who becomes a guinea pig for a new aphrodisiac and it leads him to a wild state where everything in his world becomes a sexual image. Eventually the exhausted protagonist dies “of an excess of pleasure” (33).
Writing as a hypnagogic state
The Beat writer Jack Kerouac published a sequel to On the Road and The Subterraneans composed entirely from his dream diary. Book of Dreams continues the story of Sal Paradise (aka Jack Kerouac), Dean Moriarty and other characters from On the Road and The Subterraneans in what the author describes as “weird new dream situations.” Kerouac intended the book not to be merely an account of his own dreams, but an actual novel. The book is a collection of stories, tableaux, and vignettes about his fictional characters and their adventures in his dreaming mind.
“When I woke up from my sleep I just lay there looking at the pictures that were fading slowly like in a movie fadeout into the recesses of my subconscious mind . . . I got my weary bones out of bed & through eyes swollen with sleep swiftly scribbled in pencil in my little dream notebook till I had exhausted every rememberable item. . . I wrote nonstop so that the subconscious could speak for itself in is own form, that is, uninterruptedly flowing & rippling.”
REM Power
The mystery writer Sue Grafton tries to exploit the benefits of REM dreams by waking herself up at the right time: “If I am very blocked . . . I will drink coffee late in the day, knowing that it’s going to wake me up in the dead of night. So I get to sleep perfectly soundly and then, at three A.M. when left brain is tucked away . . . right brain comes out to play and helps me” (Epel 62). However unscientific Grafton’s method seems, it may be beneficial for writers to experiment with their sleeping patterns as well.
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Suggested Readingtag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.23182007-04-13T20:42:42Z2007-05-06T09:46:17Z Barrett, Deirdre. “The ‘Committee of Sleep’: A Study of Dream Incubation for Problem Solving.” Dreaming 3.2 (1993). http://www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/barrett3-2.htm Barrett, Deirdre. The Committee of Sleep. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001. DeAngelis, Tori. “The Dream Canvas: Are Dreams a Muse to...Lily Briscoe
Barrett, Deirdre. “The ‘Committee of Sleep’: A Study of Dream Incubation for Problem
Solving.” Dreaming 3.2 (1993). http://www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/barrett3-2.htm
Barrett, Deirdre. The Committee of Sleep. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001.
DeAngelis, Tori. “The Dream Canvas: Are Dreams a Muse to the Creative?” MonitorOn Psychology. 34.10 (2003). http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov03/canvas.html
Epel, Naomi. Writers Dreaming. New York: Carol Southern Books, 1993.
Kerouac, Jack. Book of Dreams. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1961.
Garfield, Patricia. Creative Dreaming. 2nd edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Hartmann, Ernest. Dreams and Nightmares. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2001.
States, Bert O. “Dreams: The Royal Road to Metaphor.” SubStance. 30.1&2 (2001). 104-
118.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Across the Plains. 1892. Project Gutenberg. Michael Hart.August,
1996. Project Gutenberg Association. 7 Dec.2006..
Walker, Matthew P., Conor Liston, J. Allan Hobson, and Robert Stickgold. “Cognitive
Flexibility Across the Sleep-Wake Cycle.” Cognitive Brain Research, 14 (2002). 317-324.
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Linkstag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.23162007-04-12T19:38:34Z2007-05-06T05:22:12Z“A Chapter on Dreams” from Robert Louis Stevenson's Across the Plains http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/geo/travel/AcrossthePlains/chap8.html Quotes about Creative Writing and Dreams http://koti.mbnet.fi/oneira/1creativ.htm Dream Incubation Tips http://www.creativethinkingwith.com/Dream-Incubation.html Incubation Instructions http://members.aol.com/dreamartscience/dream/incubation.html DreamTime radio program: on dream imagery and the language of metaphor and association http://www.modavox.com/VoiceAmericaCMS/Webmodules/HostModaview.aspx?HostId=210&ChannelId=5&Flag=1...Lily Briscoe
“A Chapter on Dreams” from Robert Louis Stevenson's Across the Plainshttp://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/geo/travel/AcrossthePlains/chap8.htmlQuotes about Creative Writing and Dreamshttp://koti.mbnet.fi/oneira/1creativ.htmDream Incubation Tipshttp://www.creativethinkingwith.com/Dream-Incubation.htmlIncubation Instructionshttp://members.aol.com/dreamartscience/dream/incubation.htmlDreamTime radio program: on dream imagery and the language of metaphor and associationhttp://www.modavox.com/VoiceAmericaCMS/Webmodules/HostModaview.aspx?HostId=210&ChannelId=5&Flag=1]]>
About the Authortag:blogs.qc.cuny.edu,2007:/blogs/dreams/rrose//239.24362007-04-11T16:47:54Z2007-05-06T04:21:18Z Rebekah Rose knows a thing or two about writer's block. She is currently working on a novel about the South during the 1960's, despite the fact that she is neither from the South or was alive during the 60's....Lily Briscoe
Rebekah Rose knows a thing or two about writer's block. She is currently working on a novel about the South during the 1960's, despite the fact that she is neither from the South or was alive during the 60's. Nevertheless, she continues to tap away at the computer, waiting for inspiration to strike. In the meantime, she is a senior at Queens College, and will receive her Bachelor's in English Literature in May '07. Rebekah plans to further her education, but whether that will entail an MA in literature or an MFA in Creative Writing, only time will tell. ]]>
A caveat: Whether the dream content seems insightful or useless, a writer has to do the work of translating the dream language into written language. Much of the work of writing involves a process of revising, polishing, and cultivating an effective style—something that dreams unfortunately cannot do. Nevertheless, without an idea as a starting point, the writer does not have material to work with. This can result in the dreaded situation of “writer’s block.” Fortunately, by “sleeping on it,” writers can solve their creative problems and get unblocked
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“I had long been trying to write a story on this subject [Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde]. For two days I went about wracking my brains for a plot of any sort, and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and consciously."
Stevenson alludes to the scene where Jekyll, after being invited to a walk by Utterson, looks out of the window and becomes horrified. The origin of this scene came from a nightmare in which Stevenson was looking down from a window of a room and saw a big brown dog. The “hellish” beast caught flies with his paws and after eating them, looked up at the dreamer and winked at him. Stevenson was filled with terror at the behavior of the “devilish brown dog,” and it inspired Stevenson to create the persona of the evil Mr. Hyde.
Unfortunately, scientists have yet to discover a committee of Keebler Elves in the brain, but research has uncovered evidence that dreams may be useful in addressing and working through problems.
]]>
The study showed that subjects who took the test shortly after REM sleep had slower responses to the stronger primes and had an easier and faster response to weaker primes. It seems like the participants transcended direct and logical thought to more complex and creative thought. “It’s as if the brain is preferentially searching out and activating weak associates, unexpected paths, instead of the obvious, normally strong associates,” observes Robert Stickgold, one of the researchers (qtd. in DeAngelis).
The results indicate that dreamers under the influence of REM sleep can develop unique and creative metaphors in waking life. By finding a connection between weak primes, writers can create vivid and original metaphors. Writers are constantly devising new ways of looking at things; often they assign significance and symbolic meaning to objects. A cognitively flexible writer uses free association to mine new ideas with confidence, not self-censure.
]]>
In Naomi Epel’s fascinating compilation of writers’ dreams in Writers Dreaming, Charles Johnson described how he felt that something was missing in the draft of the novel he was working on. As he fell asleep, Johnson experienced a hypnagogic dream that inspired him to write a scene that would provide the impetus for much of the dramatic action of the award-winning novel, Middle Passage.
Hypnagogia is a space of loose, less structured waking thought occurring as a dreamer drifts off to sleep, and right before he or she becomes fully awake (Hartmann 90). 
These dreams can shed light on how inspiration may strike as we fall asleep or immediately after we awaken. During this stage, the dreamer is semi-conscious— half-awake, half-asleep as images flicker through the mind. During a hypnagogic hallucination, “some of the physiological mechanisms of REM sleep persist after they would normally shut down” (101). In one sense, hypnagogic hallucinations are the dreams closest to waking. Because of the intriguing implications of this dreamlike state, researchers have used it to help them understand dream images and problem solving. Research shows how hypnagogic images can improve mental activity and access memories and images for our use.
In the October 2000 issue of Science, researchers from Harvard Medical School published the results of a study about the role that the brain plays in hypnagogic images during sleep onset. Robert Stickgold and his colleagues taught twenty-seven participants to play the computer game Tetris. The subjects played the game for seven hours over a span of three days. Each night, they were awakened during three states: REM, NREM and the hypnagogic period at sleep onset. After each awakening, researchers prompted the subjects to record what they saw in their minds.
The findings were illuminating: the participants reported “intrusive, stereotypical, visual images of the game at sleep onset” (350). The hypnagogic images were strikingly similar in each dreamer—most dreamed of Tetris pieces, usually falling down a screen (351). Most importantly, the subjects increased their scores significantly. These results suggest that the residue from waking life is worked on in dreaming life and can be accessed by dreamers to improve their performance. This is especially true of an activity to which a dreamer devotes a lot of waking hours. Because of the intensive mental process of their work, writers may end up dreaming about their projects. They may dream about a character, setting, or emotion in the manuscript they are writing.
A hypnagogic state may help a writer think more creatively because they integrate characteristics of both unconscious and conscious activity. According to Dr. Deirdre Barrett of Harvard University, there are two modes of thinking: primary and secondary. Primary thinking involves the visual, intuitive, and emotional. Barrett associates this mode with the bizarre, illogical, and unnerving REM state. On the contrary, secondary thinking is logical, linear, and focused (87). Barrett asserts that hypnagogic dreams combine elements from both primary and secondary modes, creating a state of interaction and evaluation that is a catalyst for creativity.
]]>
Fusing strawberries and sex into a powerful, sensuous metaphor, Barker was inspired to write “The Age of Desire.” The short story is about a man who becomes a guinea pig for a new aphrodisiac and it leads him to a wild state where everything in his world becomes a sexual image. Eventually the exhausted protagonist dies “of an excess of pleasure” (33).
Writing as a hypnagogic state
The Beat writer Jack Kerouac published a sequel to On the Road and The Subterraneans composed entirely from his dream diary. Book of Dreams continues the story of Sal Paradise (aka Jack Kerouac), Dean Moriarty and other characters from On the Road and The Subterraneans in what the author describes as “weird new dream situations.” Kerouac intended the book not to be merely an account of his own dreams, but an actual novel. The book is a collection of stories, tableaux, and vignettes about his fictional characters and their adventures in his dreaming mind. 
“When I woke up from my sleep I just lay there looking at the pictures that were fading slowly like in a movie fadeout into the recesses of my subconscious mind . . . I got my weary bones out of bed & through eyes swollen with sleep swiftly scribbled in pencil in my little dream notebook till I had exhausted every rememberable item. . . I wrote nonstop so that the subconscious could speak for itself in is own form, that is, uninterruptedly flowing & rippling.”
REM Power
The mystery writer Sue Grafton tries to exploit the benefits of REM dreams by waking herself up at the right time: “If I am very blocked . . . I will drink coffee late in the day, knowing that it’s going to wake me up in the dead of night. So I get to sleep perfectly soundly and then, at three A.M. when left brain is tucked away . . . right brain comes out to play and helps me” (Epel 62). However unscientific Grafton’s method seems, it may be beneficial for writers to experiment with their sleeping patterns as well.
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