Dreaming...

So I was just reading a book (The Elite by Kiera Cass) and during one of the scenes, I was so nervous for the main character that I could literally feel my heart beat speed up and my hands shake. That's how attached I felt to the story. And that's why I love books so much. I don't just read them; I crawl inside them for minutes, hours, or days at a time. This nervous feeling gave me a deja vu moment. It was the exact feeling I've been getting in my dreams lately.

When I was a kid, my grandpa told me I should write my dreams down because maybe someday they'd make a good story. But I never did. For one thing, I've never been disciplined enough to keep a diary. And for another, I always thought my dreams were inconsequential. Most of the time they are about real people, real places, and derive from real events in my life. There is no world of wizards or hidden magic in my subconsciousness. It's just a jumble. My mind is a mess.

Recently, though, I've been waking up in the mornings, or even in the middle of the night, with intense nervousness. It's not nightmares, just real emotion about the events of my dreams. Just like the characters and settings of my dreams, the emotions are real too. I feel love and fear and determination and hopelessness every night as my body rests. And isn't that what readers want to experience in the stories they read?

Even though I read mostly fiction and a lot of fantasy, for me books have never been about the scandalous events or the super powers. I want to protect my sister in the Hunger Games or laugh with Harry Potter and his friends. I want to make a statement to the world in The Help and to fall in love in The Fault in Our Stars. Stories, just like dreams, are about emotions. So, maybe I will try to channel those emotions I feel at night. You never know until you try.