I had the oddest dream last night. Sometimes my daily activities invade my dreams. Or at least, mine did last night. In my dream, I was teaching a class of writers. This was their assignment: write a scene using conversation between two people or among more than two people to move the action along. Dialogue! Quotation marks! Actual words of speakers!
How many writers were in the class? I don’t know. A bunch. And then, I was thinking, “Okay, I don’t want to have to grade all these papers, so what do I do?”
An answer came zinging into my dream. The first thirty minutes they would be writing. The next thirty minutes, they’d break into groups and read what they had written to each other. There! Mission accomplished. They would learn from each other.
Maybe I dreamed this because in Grave Heritage, Darcy, Flora, and Jasper are having a conversation around the dining table. What Jasper has to say answers a few of the questions about a murder.
Patricia Cornwell was a guest on Fox and Friends this morning. Her books are enormously successful. In between writing she scuba dives, rides in helicopters and other activities that are far from sedentary. So, do I need to take up hang gliding or spelunking or mountain climbing? Would that keep my sleep free of writing tips and help sell books? Am I too focused in on computer and a make-believe world? Hmm.
I like writing dialogue; it’s like learning what makes a person tick. But, when writing slips into my dreams, well, I don’t know. Maybe I need to try sky diving, do you think?
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