:::Rolls over, faces you:::

Hey there. :::wink::: How you doin’?

Did that make you feel uneasy?  I’m sorry.

What do you keep beneath your pillow?  A knife?  A gun?  A doughnut?  A handful of nuts or popcorn?  Junior Mints?  M&M’s?  Nothing? Your hands (depending how you sleep)?

I don’t keep anything, well, except for my hands.  My sleeping habits have changed, and now–sometimes–I’ll wake to find myself sleeping on my stomach.  My hands are usually asleep upon my waking.

Last year for Christmas, one of my gifts was a digital recorder, which is currently in the center console of my car.  It’s probably certain the cold weather isn’t helping that battery life, but the devise was working the last time I checked.  It would fit well under my pillow, next to it, or on the nightstand; but that defeats the purpose of removing electronics away from the bed.  It’s bad enough that my phone is on the nightstand, and that means there is only room for one.

There can be only one.

This brings me to the ol’ reliable pen and paper.  You’d be blindly writing, but it’s safe to think that you know your writing, scribbling, note taking by now.  It’s the translating that is the difficult part, but its manageable.  At least you’ll have something to look at and reference at a later date.  Depending on the purpose of your analyzing dreams–if you even do so.

The “In-Between” series I’ve been throwing together is partially nonsense.  The purpose of writing those is to serve as a cleanser, a break in reading the normal posts on the blog.  The individual posts are stream of consciousness pieces of flash fiction, which are based off of dreams.  Sometimes writers have to write even if the posts are strange and don’t make sense. Writing spontaneously or based off of an idea (improv-related) can be as rewarding as exercising.  Showering helps as well, but–of course–we are all different.  It’s better to take your mind off of what you’re doing to be successful for a writing session.  It’s not healthy or productive to stare at your computer.

Instead, take whatever idea comes to mind and go with it.  It could be used at a later date for all you know.  Go to town with it.

I’m mentioning this, because I had an amazing date the other night.  Three of them, actually, and they happened all at once.  From what I don’t know, but Mark does, Dorothy and Dottie and Dee-Dee were there names.  (I always knew my dreams were a bit on the predictable side.)  It was speed dating on some other plane of existence where each date occurred in three different rooms, and I was bouncing from one room to the other at ridiculous speeds.  My time was spent more with the dirty blond, and you can apply whichever name you feel appropriate to her.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember much else from the dream.  Last night’s dream, on the other hand, was a doozy.  I jolted awake, and my hand hit the notebook and pen from under my pillow, which collided with the night stand before lying upon the floor.  The pen was still nestled in the book, however.  I muttered, “Ah, crap,” before rolling over and not bothering to pick it up.

However, back to the dating dream,:  if this could get played out in real life without any repercussions, it would probably be fun to try.  But it still would be a bit of a stretch and the resulting feeling would not be personally pleasant.  I’ve stated it before:  dating isn’t that fun when you have to multitask.

I’m just as curious as whichever In-Between segment this falls in (I’m betting, not pleading, on the fifth).  I’ll do my best to entertain you all.  There are installments with a monstrous white alligator and zombies.  Locations:  the suburbs, churches, some futuristic vicinity with tight crawlspaces (which I thoroughly dislike).

Do you write about dreams?  How do you combat writers block?  If you could write a genre that you’re unfamiliar with (but would like to be) what would you write?