Writer world problems...

I had a dream this morning that I was in a haunted house. It was one of those dreams that seems fairly normal at first but there is this lurking sense of dread hanging around so you just know it's going to turn bad soon. Now I have had nightmares for as long as I can remember (insomnia and nightmares and night terrors often go hand in hand in hand) and I learned about lucid dreaming a long time ago to combat this problem. Quite often when I realize that a dream is going to go bad, or has gone bad I can turn the dream around.

It's a really great skill to have if you need to sleep without panic.

Except when it pisses the writer part of your brain off.

We were trying to clear this old house of the furniture and belongings so we could sell it, or remodel it or something and there would be these accidents. And things moving that we didn't move. And just...dread...So in the dream I was just starting to figure out (writer me) that the furniture was possessed by Agnes (an Aunt maybe?) and she was watching through mirrors and reflective surfaces and then coming out when she was alone with who ever her intended victim was and horrible things would follow.

Well as the writer part of my brain was going, "Oh cool!" the lucid dreamer part of my brain was like, "Oh no, let's fix this!" and so Agnes was becoming less and less menacing and more and more fairy godmotherish. I was so relieved and frustrated at the same time.

I wanted to see how it would end up. How did we take care of Agnes or did she win? Still living in her house on the hill in her furniture peeking out at the world through her mirrors...but my brain was busy rewriting things so that Agnes wasn't hurting anyone, she was just trying to protect me from people who might not have my best interests at heart. She was a benevolent spirit. Only there to help. Which is great for sleeping and lousy for story potential.

But considering my sleep tracking has looked like a bad joke all week I will take the lucid dreaming stay asleep portion over the wake in a cold sweat with a perfectly written story ready to go.

I guess.

If I have to.

But I still think she's watching....