Do you dream?

I don't dream much, or if I do, it doesn't "stick". Once, blissfully, I woke with the opening of a book clear as day in my head and rushed straight to my computer and put it down in first person, stream of consciousness mode. It was a couple of years before I actually wrote the book, but I knew the girl in my head, saw her clearly and can still remember that moment when her story started pouring out of the ends of my fingers.

Last night my dream was different. Vivid, one of those that's so real that it's hard to wake up from. It was about a well known author standing for Parliament in the constituency where I grew up. She's American, so this was weird, but the promo was fabulous - glamorous, glossy and gorgeous - like the woman (and her books) and I was telling everyone how great she was even though I hadn't a clue what party she was standing for because I knew she was someone I'd want in my corner. And the public library had posters and flyers everywhere.

I sort of woke once, but the dream wouldn't let me go and the second dip was deeper and darker. I'd left the library and was trying to get some last minute Christmas shopping done - late, in a hurry, getting anxious. And then the spiders came. Dozens of them. Huge and hairy, running about the High Street where I grew up, wanting a chunk of me. I escaped and then someone stopped me to "get my back" and was wrestling with a spider that had its claws into my clothes and would not quit.

She was still struggling when I finally managed to wake up, not sure where I was and still with the spiders very real in my mind. Ugh. Horrible. I'm still a bit shaky, to be honest, but here I am, putting it all down again, although I don't someone think I'll be writing a gothic romance mash-up with a glamorous author politician saving the world from the zombie spiders! That is not an memory I want to live with for three months! However, the imagination is still in full working order and getting on with it even while I sleep and bits of that dream - the panic, the fear, the anxiety will stay with me and power my writing.

Meamwhile I was very glad to see daylight!