Personal Challenge

All this writing has been giving me really vivid dreams.  I LOVE vivid dreams, even the freaky ones.  (As opposed to nightmares, which I do not like at all.)  They provide awesome story prompts.  They give me new characters, new motivations, new voices and moods and interpersonal angst.  They help me describe settings and clothing with greater detail.  They can remind me of atmospheres I don't often use.  And the emotion!  I recognize that not everyone has emotional dreams, and not all of mine are always full of emotion.  But when they get vivid?  Yeah.  They say dreams are one way our brains process emotions and events.  All I gotta say is that I must have a ton of unresolved emotion. ;)

The really beautiful thing is that dreaming so vividly and with such emotion puts me in a good mood (usually - dreams of loss or rage obviously don't count in the above).  I wake up already in creative mode!  Plus, many dreams make great stories or plot threads, so I am almost never at a loss for "new" ideas.  

The unfortunate part is that my current schedule requires I get up, immediately have lunch, then segue into Berrykin's nap time.  Vivid dreams also usually make me feel like I've been having an Indiana Jones adventure all night, so I'm not very energetic.  In fact, most mornings - partially to delay the schedule issue - I find I lay in bed for an hour reliving the dream, picking apart characters, and generally committing pieces to memory.  (Two spouses with no day job is hard on the finances, but it enables awesome parenting options.)  But then my day is still thrown off, because I get more lethargic, like I've slept too long.  Neither a rushed morning or a lazy one is optimal.

So, for the month of March, I've decided to take up agent Nephele Tempest's challenge (you can find her blog, "Writing and Rambling," to the right) to write every day.  This is the same basic challenge as she put forth in December, which I did actually complete (yay, me!).  Except this time, because March isn't as busy as December, she's added extras.  The key factors are to write for at least 15 minutes every day of the month, and to locate story prompts (do you see where this is going...?).

My challenge for myself is to get up an hour early and jot down my dreams.  Not full-length feature stories, just notes and, more importantly, prompts based on what occurred.  Then, once those are recorded (and hopefully out of my head), I will write a blog post.  My goal is to write two professional posts this week, and go up from there progressively.  The non-professional posts will probably be posted here.  The professional ones, though, will be going elsewhere (that I will link to when it's ready).  I may also find I need to take a few minutes in there to create to-do lists and organize my day to make my whirlwind-in-the-skull less all-consuming.

Do you have goals for March?