I don’t dream about writing. I don’t dream about my books, my career, about storytelling.<\/p>\n
I dream about stories but not storytelling, I guess you’d say — frequently really weird stories, to boot. My wife has those awkward-but-normal dreams that express anxiety or excitement over mundane life (“I was at the bank and someone said something about me and…”) whereas my dreams are like David Lynch-directed video games (“And then I jumped out of the helicopter and the helicopter was also a god? And then I took the ham sandwich and…”).<\/p>\n
This was last night’s dream, though:<\/p>\n
I was walking. New York City street. Manhattan. Very busy. Bright. Summer.<\/p>\n
(Summer? Wishful thinking, I guess.)<\/p>\n
I was going from — well, I don’t know where. I had intention. Walking from one building, going to another across town. I was walking with some purpose as one does in the city and as I passed by a doorway, Amy Sherman-Palladino stepped out. Black dress. Dark sunglasses.<\/p>\n
She is the creator of\u00a0Gilmore Girls<\/strong> and\u00a0Bunheads<\/strong>.<\/p>\n (Have you seriously not watched\u00a0Gilmore Girls<\/strong>? You are dead to me. One of my top ten favorite shows. Smart, snappy, sweet. Like\u00a0Buffy<\/strong> but without all the vampire-slaying. Like\u00a0Veronica Mars<\/strong> without all the… detecting? Whatever, shut up, just go watch it.)<\/p>\n I have not thought of Amy Sherman-Palladino in a long time and I do not know what possessed me to dream of her, but there she was, looking like herself but taller, and occasionally transforming into Lauren Graham. She was hurrying somewhere.<\/p>\n I hurried after, hoping to catch up.<\/p>\n (It was like that scene in\u00a0The Matrix<\/strong> where Neo and Morpheus walk against the crowd.)<\/p>\n I finally caught up and said, “Can I ask you some writing questions?”<\/p>\n And she said, “I walk fast so you’ll have to talk fast.”<\/p>\n I said, “Do you have any advice for me?”<\/p>\n “Write from the rails,” she said. As if I was supposed to understand that.<\/p>\n Then suddenly she was outpacing me again and I had to struggle against the crowd — finally I matched her speedy pace and said, “I don’t know what that means.”<\/p>\n She answered as she walked, and said, “Write like you’re up high and going fast. The story is a ride for you as much as it is for them.” And I tried to ask her more but she interrupted me, sounding irritated: “Write like you’re hanging from a rail.”<\/p>\n I tried tell her again that I didn’t know what she meant.<\/p>\n Riding from rails? Hanging from rails? What?<\/p>\n Finally, we were crossing the middle of an intersection. Cars screeching brakes. Honking at us. She stopped, and whirled me around and lifted her sunglasses and said:<\/p>\n “You gotta write stuff that scares the shit out of you.”<\/p>\n And then she was gone, moving faster than I could.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t dream about writing. I don’t dream about my books, my career, about storytelling. I dream about stories but not storytelling, I guess you’d say — frequently really weird stories, to boot. My wife has those awkward-but-normal dreams that express anxiety or excitement over mundane life (“I was at the bank and someone said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-5IN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21997"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22004,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21997\/revisions\/22004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}