Writing can affect your dreamlife in the strangest ways. When I was writing about synaesthesia for Breathing in Colour, I had lucid dreams in which I experienced the mingled perceptions of synaesthesia, even though I don’t have the condition in my waking life. Now I’m writing about a man who suffers from moving nightmares in Dreamrunner, I’ve had incidents in which I wake up acting out a dream movement, like raising my arm in the air or half sitting up in my sleep (See my IASD 2009 paper on the On Writing page).

It’s astonishing and at the same time understandable to recognise the extent to which our creative writing can shape the content of our dreams. My short story The Kielius Fish, itself built around a mixture of dreamed and imagined imagery, prompted a whole string of dreams, lucid and non-lucid, about leaping fish. Once I dreamed of struggling to save a golden fish that was ‘drowning’ in the sand, and I wrote this into a poem. Dreams spark writing, which spark dreams, which spark more writing (the dreaming mind doesn’t allow anyone the luxury of claiming writer’s block). With lucid dreams, the scope for dream creativity seems to extend even further; the dreamer ‘wakes up’ inside the dream and can consider her writing projects while engaging with her imagination in one of its purest forms.

Chris Olsen and Kira Sass from the US have produced a stunning documentary on lucid dreaming, in which beautiful images accompany dream anecdotes, and researchers share their insights and their most formative and powerful lucid dreams. It’s called ‘Wake up! Exploring the Potential of Lucid Dreaming.’

Something to try: When you next realise you’re dreaming, try thinking about your current writing project in the dream; call up one of the characters to talk with, or ask the dream environment for help with some element of the plot. Be ready to be surprised by what materialises!

Today I was feeling particularly happy as I wandered around town, and found myself counting my blessings. It occurred to me that I have everything I want in my life at the moment and I thanked my lucky stars. At the same time, I was thinking about the vast effort Dreamrunner needs at the moment, and that at times part of me just wants to lie on a beach, close my eyes, and forget all about writing it!

I got home, still feeling lucky and happy, and found a letter waiting for me – my first proper fan mail. It was sent to my publishers, who sent it on to me. It came from a French woman who’s suffering from bone cancer. Someone had left a copy of Breathing in Colour at the Mayo Clinic in the USA, and a nurse passed it onto her. I read her story of threatened amputation, losing her teeth and hair, nausea and morphine doses, using every last Euro for treatments… and I read about how Breathing in Colour had transported her to India, giving her some respite. I compared the woman’s life to my own and my eyes filled with tears.

This letter reminded me of why I write – to reach out to other people and, if at all possible, to help them in some small way, even if it’s only through providing a brief distraction from a darker reality. So even if writing a book sometimes feels like scaling a wall – when the plot isn’t fluid, or the structure seems to have gone all wobbly – you just have to push on with it. I know I’m nearly at the stage when I’ll be flying through Dreamrunner again, and if the finished novel helps just one person, one day, then all the effort will have been worth it.