Tag Archives: daydreams

Short Story Daydreams

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Lately, very few of my daydreams have been about me. I might have some vague notion of myself as the lead character but mostly I have been daydreaming short stories that have no relation to my life whatsoever. It’s a new thing for me. I like it.

The older I get, the less bound by conventional imagination I am. What I mean by that is that I don’t have to be the star of my daydreams and I don’t daydream about typical life events. I like to go to the bizarre places in my mind even the scary places because it’s making me a better writer and a more creative thinker.

So, expect more short stories and don’t be surprised if they are bizarre and occasionally twisted- I plan on following this rabbit down it’s hole, whatever that may mean.

Sometimes, Daydreams Break Your Heart

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They seem harmless enough. The dictionary defines a daydream as “A dreamlike musing or fantasy while awake, especially of the fulfillment of wishes or hopes.” How could something so lovely sounding ever break your heart? Actually, I don’t have a clever answer for that question, I just know that occasionally they do.

The thing is- daydreams are so whimsical and beautiful and magical that when it’s over your life just seems so beige and miserable compared to what your daydream was. That might seem a little dramatic, but for someone with an imagination like mine it really isn’t. There have been so many times (especially lately) that my daydreams are so grand and exquisite and not necessarily unrealistic (read- love, successful career, and eternal happiness) that when I snap out of it I feel really sad and lonely. This is made all the worse by the fact that the daydreams have been so possible. When I daydream about clouds made of cotton candy, or being able to move objects with my mind, or eating everything I could ever want and never gaining a pound- those things don’t hurt because they are, if not impossible, highly improbable. So, figuratively “waking-up” from those daydreams doesn’t completely suck. Waking-up from daydreams that involve things like falling in love (which isn’t exactly improbable) break your heart. Sometimes, hoping equals hurting.

Despite this, I know I will still have daydreams that break my heart if only a little bit. I guess I want to hold on to the hope even if it hurts for a while.

And so it begins…

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Taking my cue from one of my most frequent ( and less fanciful) daydreams, I have begun working earnestly on my travel memoir (also known as my first book). The whole thing is written in my mind- when I daydream I do it in detail- it’s just a matter of taking it from my mind (and journal pages) and putting it on my computer. Of course, I also need to edit, organize, and take it out of stream of consciousness (lets be honest, that only worked well for Hemingway) and then voila, my very first book will be completed and the wild success can follow accordingly (ok- so there is still a fair amount of daydream in this…)

Unfortunately, I find myself somehow hitting walls with writing it.  It’s not writer’s block, I know exactly what I want to write, it’s more along the lines of writer’s laziness. I have never thought of myself as lazy,never once been accused of laziness, but I’m not sure what else I could possibly call it, I literally don’t want to open my computer and type. The story is all there- and I can’t seem to force it into actualization, something concrete to send to publishers, and I’m not sure why. Psychological issue perhaps? Something like self-fulfilling prophecy, or fear of rejection. Probably not, I think it’s more about being afraid that once I actually attempt what I have been imagining for more years than I would admit, that I won’t be able to daydream about it anymore. Because if I am rejected by every publisher, then how can I possibly continue dreaming about a Pulitzer? I guess I just feel very protective over my dreams, which is kind of bizarre.

But, you know, I have a lot of daydreams. It certainly wouldn’t be the end of the world if I lost one to reality. There will, after all, always be plenty of things to occupy my imagination, and if I happened to get lucky and this dream were to end up being even better in reality than in my imagination, then it would have been worth all the worry and writing struggles. Aha.  Excuse me, I have a book to finish………….

Never is an awfully long time.

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I live a large part of my life in daydreams. So occasionally my reality is tainted by my imagination and I am always completely stunned at the contrariness of the two. My imagined life is extraordinarily extraordinary, my real life is quiet and ordinary, not bad certainly and happy definitely, but inevitably less than imagined. Alas. What is a contrary girl to do? Something, I just have to do something. The difficulty lies in the sheer amount of things I have imagined myself doing- writing a wildly unexpected and successful novel, becoming an artsy pianist a la Regina Spektor,  catching a serial killer, winning a Nobel Peace Prize, discovering there really is a Narnia…and a million other things I’ve daydreamed myself doing that probably won’t (or can’t) ever be done, at least not by me.

But then again…sifting through the more absurd and unrealistic dreams (Oh, Narnia if only you really did exist!) I find myself wondering why I haven’t considered the possibility that a least a few of these imaginings are, in fact, possible. Why have I always assumed never? Never is, after all, an awfully long time- it seems to me that logically there are very few things that will never happen. So, I’m going to try, at least make an attempt, at being the extraordinary me of my daydreams or countrarywise my daydreams are going to make an attempt at being me.