Where Ladybugs Roar

Confessions and Passions of a Compulsive Writer

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Scary Dreams

In the wee hours of the morning I decided to take a sleeping pill. (I have such intense insomnia that I have the atomic bomb version of sleeping pills. I'll be forced to sleep for eight hours--which is why I can only take them on Friday nights when there will be no church or school to wake up for.) Sometimes the end result is a deep coma of sleep with weird dreams.

So, in real life, I have Honor out with several agents and then Re: Straint out with one. Last night, I had my first writerly dream. I dreamt I woke up and went to check my email immediately.

"Gasp! No, Wendy! The horror! The horror!"

Wait for it! I check my email every day. That's not the scary part. I was just building suspense.

So, in my email box is this email with an attachment that I open up. My entire screen turns blue--like a robin's egg type of blue. It's this light, sad, pathetic blue. I scroll down to find the following note (in a font that is red and looks type-written) :

Dear Wendy,

Thank you for sending me an excerpt from your manuscript. Unfortunately, while your idea is unique and interesting, your writing is bad and will take a lot of work to make it acceptable. Please send us the rest, and we'll decide whether a rewrite is possible or whether we'll have one of our own authors write your story.

Sincerely,
The Agency

I think they also mentioned something about my characters and plot being really good. (After all, it's not them... it's me.) I thought, "What do I do? Do I drastically rewrite the whole thing? Is it okay to just sell the 'story and characters?'" I was torn whether to feel happy or sad or what? How do you deal with, "You suck as a person, but you hang out with nice people and stumble upon greatness?"

I woke up, startled, and had this full-on Ebeneezer Scrooge moment when I realized that I hadn't received this email. "It's not too late!!! Merry manuscripts to one and all!" It was horrible anxiety and conflict followed by intense relief.

I've been feeling a little anxious about my current queries. (I mean... not that you'd guess it from that dream.) I'm not sure whether to just be patient or whether I should send out more queries or what. I'm discouraged. There isn't a direct link and possibly not a reason to be, but I'm still discouraged.

My kids are currently watching Pink Panther, and wow... some of these are acid trip strange.

Okay, I need to buckle down and work on a WIP. Buckle down. Really.

Wow. Seriously. I feel like I need to wake up while watching this Pink Panther. I'm pretty sure this is another dream. It's like the whole "Pink Elephants on Parade" from Dumbo all over again. Okay... for your viewing psychosis: "Pink Outs." You can watch it and share in the strange experience of your brain going numb like an ice cream headache followed by a lobotomy.

Well, it's over, but my train of thought has derailed and gone screaming into an embankment where it exploded and there were no survivors.

I should go find a WIP to actually work and progress on.

5 comments:

  1. Ooh, I can relate to insomnia! It's plagued me since jr. high, but I was never given atomic bomb grade sleeping pills. They would've come in handy that time I went four straight days without sleep and started halucinating. Tip: Never try to do your 7th grade French homework when you're seeing giant wolves with glowing eyes hanging out in your kitchen and think that's totally okay. Just trying to give you the benefit of my life experience there. ;)

    The only writing-related dream I can remember having was when I dreamt a beautiful poem that was going to change the world, it was so good! I woke up and promptly wrote it down before I forgot those world-changing lines, then went back to sleep. In the morning I picked up the poem with great excitement...only to find the poem made no sense whatsoever. I have no idea what that says about my psyche. And then there was the dream about a superhero, Bonnie Hunt, and zombies at a church wedding...

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  2. Zombies at a church wedding? It sounds like you were on the verge of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" long before its time came.

    I had a similar dream where I discovered the answers to math--all math--everything became Einstein clear to me. Of course, it dropped from my head the moment I awoke, and for a good hour--I truly believed that I'd had the answers to everything and just forgotten them. Now, I'm sure they were more like your poem.

    I've tried all the lesser pills for insomnia with no luck. The pills I'm currently on were originally prescribed to me by this really old doctor who was on rotation at the clinic as an emergency fill-in. I told him what I'd tried before, because I was in with the mother of all migraines from sleep deprivation. He told me they were all crap--the other pills. I think he gave me a supply of six pills with instructions to go back to my doctor for a consultation. I rationed those pills like they were gold because the pharmacist had acted like I'd been given a prescription for cocaine or something. I'm not kidding--these things have a truck load of contraindications and warnings.

    Finally, I'd run out of pills, and the other pills truly are crap, so I returned to my doctor--who wouldn't load me up with a new rx. He insisted I try a few more crappy alternatives. A few weeks later, I went back in and explained it was taking me four hours on these crappy alternatives to get to sleep. I didn't care if he gave me six pills at a time, but I needed the real drugs.

    He gave me the full rx, and it takes me about six months or more to go through thirty pills. The last time I went in, he halved the dose in another attempt to thwart me, but that's fine. I can tell that he doesn't even like the idea of me being on them, but I don't respond well to most meds. If I ever list it on my meds in an ER or clinic, the doctors practically wet themselves in shock.

    "You're on what? Why?"

    You know... for fun... giggles... or to get sleep once a week. Anyway, I can't, under any circumstances take them for more than a week at a time. It sometimes makes me think of Gremlins... because I also can't eat grapefruit with them. (I know... it's bizarre. There are a few drugs that you can't eat grapefruit with, and that's one of them.)

    Well, that's so much more than you asked to know. :)

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  3. I think a dream like that would quickly send me running for the hills. I have enough self-esteem issues, thank you very much. I would not need my own mind ganging up on me. When I told my friends I was trying to get published, they tried to look excited, but it was really more akin to the looks that you would receive if you told someone that you had a terminal illness.

    Sounds like that old doc gave you a gift, something you may never have known about otherwise. I hate the way that some doctors think that all of us are trying to get high off of the stuff they give us. That we don't actually need them to live normal lives, we have ulterior motives.

    Grapefruit, huh? Weird. There were some pills that my mom could not have cheese with once, and I thought that was strange. I would have told the psychiatrist that I would be more depressed without cheese and on the antidepressants.

    Okay I've rambled long enough:)

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  4. A life without cheese would be depressing.

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  5. Cheese, and everything cheesy, I feel like making a list, yummm.

    Oh and the dream, I was scared for you reading about it. Isn't that Scrooge moment the most surreal feeling?

    So I commented back on my blog, but in case anyone who comes here and doesn't go there is curious, the final count for the party I was being neurotic about was 25 kids and 32 adults, and it was fabulous and awesome :)

    Last thing, my daughter LOVED Pink Panther for years and there were some weird ones. She still goes for Tom and Jerry at least.

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