I usually remember the anxiety dreams. I wasn’t expecting dreams and writing to merge.
I still remember the nightmare when I was five years old. A roving crash of rhinoceroses attacked the family car, spearing the tires with their horns. And yes, Dr. Freud, sometimes a rhino horn is just a rhino horn.
For most of my adult life, anxiety dreams were very ordinary: I had a flight or a train to catch and was running late, in a panic. Lately, they’ve turned darker, foreboding. Last week I dreamt I had uncovered an embezzler who, after tracking me, threatened to shoot me in a crowded parking lot. I awoke after a fit of bravado, yelling: Are you really going to shoot me in front of all these people?
I was recently at a resort in my dreams, revising my memoir. Dreams and writing, a wonderful combination! Hiro, my husband, was with me. I spent most of my time in a large room where other resort guests came and went. I had my iPad and worked away. When I had first arrived at the resort, a stunning woman (she was elegantly dressed whenever I saw her—perhaps she was my as-yet unknown agent?) met me and helped me plan through my writing objectives.
That same stunning woman sat beside me, working as well, but she’d check in on my intense progress regularly during my first week at the dream resort. My work was exhilarating: I was remembering so many things, fleshing out new chapters, writing up a storm.
My iPad was doing strange things. Pop-up windows appeared under my writing work. Every time I closed the manuscript for a break, multiple windows, with video and sound, blared at me with the annoying drivel you’d expect from a pop-up window: lonely hearts apps, sexual aids, pornography. I closed down window after window as Hiro watched on in amusement.
As my last week at the resort began, the stunning woman had other business to attend to. In her place another woman arrived, also beautiful but in different ways. Darker skin and hair, and with an Australian accent. She got up from here chaise longue beside me frequently to load an array of metal shelves with boxes and packages that she was amassing to send home.
As my time at the resort was wrapping up, I felt really good about my writing. On the last day, the word count had ballooned beyond 100,000 words and panic started to set in. A-ha! A new type of anxiety dream!
I had completed a major revision and I started thinking about the real-world publisher who already has the 72,000-word manuscript and how I might share this news with them. The stunning woman returned to book some time to discuss that, and deus ex machina, Allison K. Williams, her amazing red hair so vivid in the dream, appeared, flooding me with relief.
I gathered myself together, checking in on Hiro, and prepared to talk both with the stunning woman and with Allison. A naked man suddenly appeared in my periphery in the room where I was working. It wouldn’t be one of my dreams if a naked man didn’t appear at some point,[1] but my prurience, for a change, did not alter the trajectory of the dream. Said naked man came over to me (from behind my sunglasses I watched his penis bob ever closer—here’s your cigar, Dr. Freud!) and placed a camera on my iPad. He had assumed I wanted to monitor him more closely, and that annoyed me.
I retorted loudly, indignantly: First of all, my iPad already has a camera, thank you very much. I removed his device—I noted with a laugh that the resolution was terrible! As much as I love the D, I had writing to do!
The darker skinned woman was, sadly, also ready to go, placing labels on her boxes. I watched her as I walked across the room for a confab with Hiro, Allison, and the stunning woman. I wondered how to share my concerns about the now longer manuscript. Allison then leaned in and quietly remarked on the stunning woman: Was she beside you the entire time? I can see how you would have been inspired! I smiled at Allison as I woke.
The mixed emotions the dream had provoked—accomplishment, panic, happiness, indignation—receded very gradually. I continued to wonder what to say to the real-life publisher and whether I should alter my query letters to account for the new manuscript’s length. As I left my bedroom, now home to dreams and writing, I felt a confused remorse. What had I written so passionately? The manuscript was in a good place at the end of September when I shipped it off for review and started querying. Had the dream spoke to a second memoir? Another writing project? I smiled again.
[1] Case in point: Several weeks ago, I dreamt that Kristen Paulson-Nguyen and I were stopped by cops for a minor traffic infraction. Kristen told the cops I was guilty (and I was), and the officer who appeared at my window for my license and registration was a vision from Tom of Finland: mesh tank top and Daisy Dukes beneath a classic peaked policeman’s hat.
