Complex Numbers

Dreams and Secrets

Because of its inclusion on a list for a reviewing group, my story "Dreams and Secrets"  has been getting a lot of feedback, lately.

I wrote it nearly two years ago, now. Since then, I've written... well, very little, apart from blogging. I keep getting story ideas, and sometimes writing them down, but that part of me, the part that got me onto this site, has been - not exactly shut down, but spinning gears.

I've long felt that a writer is someone who has to write, like de Sade in Quills. And I just haven't had that push, lately.

That story I referenced above - it's pretty obviously my attempt to write in the style of Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors. From the feedback I've been getting, I think the attempt was largely successful, in that it seems to elicit the feelings I was going for, and leaves many readers wanting more.

The thing I have to wonder is: Is there more? It's the prologue, not to a novel or story, but to an idea of a story, and not one that I've fleshed out even in my own mind. I get caught up in symbolism and metaphor, and I can't find a plot that works.

I'm sure you've read stories, or poems, that try to capture the feeling of dreams. I have, of course, by Neil Gaiman and by others, but to me, none of them come close. I've come close, now, with two stories: that one and another, older story. But can another author capture, for an individual, what that individual's dreams feel like?

Am I so different that the feel of my dreams is different, or is it just monumentally difficult to capture that feeling, to put it into words? It's not the same feeling as you get with movies with excellent special effects, even Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask.

Why would you want to? Because dreaming is a common human experience, like love and death, and to relate to other humans you have to invoke your common experiences; to use common languages like dreams and love and death to convey something that is, perhaps, outside a reader's experience. A translation, of sorts.

Besides, I see my job as a writer to affect a reader's emotions, to make him or her laugh, or cry, or be outraged - and sometimes I almost feel as if I can.

Almost.