The residue of feelings from what might have been is still somewhat in my body, less in my shoulders now and more around my heart, where I'm sure it'll fade. It hasn't left my mind, which is still mulling over it and trying to figure out what I was after.
It happened in a dream, either in between more dreams about a variation on Walt Disney World (with robot arms on the monorail track putting a monorail train together in front of a crowd), or before those. I had an idea for a novel. Not an idea to work out over time. A full, workable idea complete with well-drawn characters, confidence in plot, mood, the crux of each chapter, and above all, my ability to write it. At one point, I thought I had woken up after the dream, but I was still asleep. And when I woke up, I was still very much aware of what had happened, and mentally beat myself up over not being able to remember any of what that novel would have contained. I knew I could have done it. Had I remembered, had I written it all down, I could have worked on the outline today, finished it, and began writing the first few pages tomorrow. I was that sure of what my subconscious mind had worked out. I don't know if it would have been a bestseller. But right then, I didn't care about that. I wanted to write it. That's all that mattered. I knew I would have been interested in it all the way through the days it would have taken to write it.
I'm sitting here right now, thinking about when it all was clear, and I'm so vastly disappointed. That idea was right there. I don't want to search for it through pieces of other dreams; I wanted all of it whole. I'm mildly comforted by my mind actually being able to come up with a story idea that would have worked, so maybe there'll be something that sparks when I'm awake, but still, I would have liked to have it to work on right now.
