Performance Dreams and Real Nightmares

Interpreting performance dreams. Okay, it’s not that complicated.

Performance dreams all share certain characteristics – the absolute knowledge that failure is inevitable, the horror of knowing it is your fault and having little to no control over the outcome. You know the nightmare if you have ever performed anything.

Maybe even if you haven’t.

You start up out of sleep in a panic and realize it is the familiar old dream, fitted perfectly to your fears. The trappings might be different but the bones are the same.

But when I woke up this morning I realized this particular performance dream was about writing. And that was intriguing.

Because I don’t have an employer who will be angry if I get it wrong. Well, I might give myself a stern talking to, but that usually ends with chocolate. I know perfectly well I am growing into a writer and I am willing to be patient with the process. There is no specific deadline and no one cares what I wear when I am tapping out vagaries on the keyboard. If I get it wrong, I can fix it. In this arena at least, I have control over most of the elements one panics about in performance dreams.

So this dream wasn’t about me.

It was about Jock and Charlotte and whether they are ready to be in the story I am writing about them.

I’m one quarter into writing novel number four and I’m worried for them. It’s not so much my own performance which is at stake, it is the performance of these characters. I hope I’ve honed them well, but only learning how they fare in their fictional lives will tell me for sure.

Until then, it is a matter of leaping into the unknown and seeing what happens. I guess that’s what we all do every day, but most of the time we don’t think about it. Writing make you more conscious of the leap.

At least Jock and Charlotte aren’t appearing half an hour late to headline for a medieval lute concert in Carnegie Hall wearing bathing suits and roller skates.

They should be grateful. I can’t say the same.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.