Opening Pandora’s Dream Box

I’m on a creative roll, Modern Philosophers.

Yesterday, I sat out on the porch and started writing the pilot episode of the TV series about my time in college.

I churned out seventeen pages, but was constantly rewriting along the way.  On top of that, I outlined ideas for the rest of the pilot, as well as for further episodes.

When I went to bed, I tossed and turned as I mentally plotted out the upcoming scenes I planned to write today.  Everything was so clear in my head, and I was tempted to get out of bed and just keep writing.

I am off today, so after feeding the kitties, I headed back out to the porch, still in my pajamas, and picked up where I left off yesterday.

But let’s rewind for a moment and talk about what happened last night after my mind finally slowed down enough for me to fall asleep.

I had the most vivid dreams about life at NYU.

The big dream, and the one that’s still sitting with me today, involved my ex-wife.  We were still married, but she was breaking the news to me that she wanted a divorce.

Fifteen years after my divorce, I’m still having nightmares about my ex ending our marriage, and silly me is trying to get her to change her mind.

I knew that writing about my college days would conjure up all sorts of memories, but I was hoping they would be more of the “happy, happy, joy, joy” category, rather than about the woman who crushed my heart.

Yes, I did meet my ex-wife at NYU.  She was a cute Freshman on the Swim Team before she grew up to be my ex-wife.

The thing is, I haven’t even introduced her character yet.  In fact, I’m not even sure she will make it into the pilot.  I will probably put her in the big party scene just so I can say she was in the first episode, but my point is, I shouldn’t be dreaming about her.

Not yet at least.

I haven’t even unlocked those memories for the page yet.  Good lord, does that mean the dreams will get even worse once I start writing about her?

Gulp!

For your enjoyment, and to help distract myself from my dreams, I dug out some old graduation day photos to use for this post.  I hope you enjoy them.

I had quite the fashion sense back in those days, didn’t I?

I think I can put up with the dreams for now while I write the pilot.  However, if this gets picked up as a series, I might need to find a way to keep myself from dreaming.

After all, it’s one thing to break my heart in real life, but it’s an entirely different matter to do it night after night when I’m just trying to get some sleep.

The good news is that the ideas are flowing faster than I can type them.  At this rate, I should have a first draft done by next weekend.

Assuming, of course, that I’m able to get some sleep along the way…