Normal Dreams vs. A Horror Writer’s Nightmares

Writing
Image of donuts and an octopus.

This is a true story. Recently my sweet husband (SH) and I woke up as usual and had this conversation.

SH: Good morning, dear wifey.

Me: Morning, handsome.

SH: I had an awesome dream last night.

Me: Me, too! You first.

SH: We were at the bakery, and you were buying up everything you could possibly carry at once. There were glazed donuts and chocolate donuts and cupcakes with sprinkles and all sorts of bad-for-us stuff.

(I swear his eyes were positively sparkling at this point.)

SH continues: Then we went home and ate it all. Yeah, it was awesome. We should go to the bakery for real. Okay, your turn.

Me: My dream was about a sentient, tentacled, black blob-thing. Seriously, it looked like a giant octopus made out of vegemite and kinda oozy like it was half-melted. It was on the front lawn of a darling little cottage with yellow clapboard siding. The black tentacles reached for the house, probing the sides and poking the door and windows, trying to find a way in. As the tentacles explored the little house, the house bled, and the clapboard walls turned crimson.

(My sweet husband’s eyes were no longer sparkling. In fact, I think his upper lip had started to curl like lips do when they smell or taste something that’s gone bad.)

Me still talking: Yeah, it was awesome. I should write a story about it.

Feature image (altered) from Leighann Blackwood and Kris Mikael Krister on Unsplash.

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85 thoughts on “Normal Dreams vs. A Horror Writer’s Nightmares”

  1. These two dreams are so interesting.
    What a vivid and colorful dream your husband had. So happy. Just realized I never dream about food.
    I would have probably had your dream, but wake up half way through sure I am spotting the octopus half-melted through the window, on our lawn.

    Yes, you should write a story about it 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    1. You’ve never had a food dream? I used to dream about spaghetti a LOT when I was a teenager. I would not want to wake up in the middle of a nightmare and be looking out the window to spot something from the dream, yikes.:-) Thanks for commenting, Patricia!

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  2. Sounds like a conversation my wife and I had. She was talking about acorns dropping on our roof and covering the ground. I turned it into the acorns developing arms, legs, etc. and deciding to wreck havoc on the world. Us horror writers can turn the normal into a nightmare very quickly.

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  4. Yeah, I don’t have nice dreams either. They are either a bit horrid or things you think really should be analysed, like really weirdly odd. Then there was the one where I shagged Russel Brand (I really WOULDN’T in real life) (which is weird because why would I dream I did)

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  5. Ha! Priscilla this is a fabulous post. LOL. What a Lovecraft-esque dream. Write the story.
    The “Creative One-mind” seems to have nightmares as a theme. My Wednesday post is about a different sort of nightmare — the waking kind.
    LOL… still chuckling. Thanks for making me smile. Hugs on the wing.

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  7. I hope we get to read that story. As much as I love horror, I have never written a horror story (not yet, but I keep thinking about it), but I had a dream that I used in one of my stories once, a mystery/thriller, so I guess it works for other genres as well, although it is unlikely to get such reaction (probably more one of “and what happened next?”). Do keep us posted on the story and take care, Priscilla.

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  12. I’ve been writing a thriller this month for NaNoWriMo. A few days ago, I dreamt a snake had tried to eat another snake, of roughly equal size. My boyfriend pulled the fist snake off the second and in addition to e first snake a whole bunch of little snakes poured out. Picture a scene from Indiana Jones with high pitch screams…

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  13. I swear I gained a few pounds just by learning about SH’s dream. But then I found out about a scary octopus and ran as if my life depended on it and lost those pounds and then some. 🙂

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