Dream big 2010 - written by Elizabeth Scott

Dreams have made a huge difference in my life.

I never thought about them that much though, until I started writing. When I first started, I got lots of advice, and one of the many things I was told was, "write down your dreams." I thought that was a little strange, but decided to give it a try. I figured the worst that would happen would be that I'd be unable to read my (admittedly very poor) handwriting, so I bought one of those cheap one-subject notebooks and stuck it on the bookshelf by my bed.

And to this day, most of my dreams are either a. not worth writing down (even though I still do so) or b. have something interesting in them that I can never quite get to gel.

But--and this is what hooked me on writing down my dreams and why I always do--is that every once in a while I will have a dream that does lead to a story. In fact, my novel Living Dead Girl came from a dream that I had not once, but over the course of several nights until I
finally told myself, "All right, I'm going to go ahead and write this!"

So the next time you wake up from a dream and find yourself thinking about it--even it's for a sleepy second in the middle of the night--write it down. See where it takes you.

~*~

Elizabeth Scott grew up in a town so small it didn't even have a post office, though it did boast an impressive cattle population. She's sold hardware and panty hose and had a memorable three-day stint in the dot-com industry, where she learned that she really didn't want a career burning CDs. She lives just outside Washington, DC, with her husband, and firmly believes you can never own too many books. You can visit Elizabeth on the web at http://www.elizabethwrites.com and http://www.elizabethwrites.com/blog.