When I am in a period of intensive writing, I recall my dreams at a higher than normal rate. The dreams also feel more layered than normal dreams, although I re

When I am in a period of intensive writing, I recall my dreams at a higher than normal rate. The dreams also feel more layered than normal dreams, although I recognize that this is not quite knowable. I will often record these dreams as part of keeping my literary diaries. My most compelling narratives are dreamlike, in that their composition borrows a structure from the mere recording of dreams. These narratives feel like dry land dreaming that, like dry land training for skating, allows me to dial in on the technical aspects of the very fluid experience that is dreaming. This connection between dreaming and writing is of great interest to me. I am somewhat surprised that my most compelling writing was not inspired directly by any dream that I remember. The phenomenon of the one and the other are that similar. A kind of background hallucination can be intuited when writing fiction. In my experience, these hallucinations indicate that the writing has attained a degree of formal completion. I observe the characters of my story as though they were made of clay and also diminutive. Why clay? I am unsure, but I think it has to do with this clay’s yielding but inelastic quality.