Walking With Her Daughter by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

Of course, a dream isn't enough. You actually have to write it!

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Once before, I had a dream that led to a novel.  I awoke one morning from a dream about a woman awakening from sleep.  As she lay there in her bed, the sheets full of the sunlight that flooded the room, she was happy.  She felt light and buoyant and free.  But as she lay in the sunlight, in her own happiness, she was slowly overtaken with a feeling she knew to be the truth.  She knew she was not sunlit and happy.  She was sad, deeply, darkly sad.  She was a well of sadness, an unending hole of sorrow.  She stood up from the bed and walked out to the door, pushed it open to see the bluest ocean imaginable.  But it didn't matter.  Nothing changed her grief.

When I awoke from my dream of her awakening, I wondered why she was so sad.  I had no idea.  She was in a tropical clime, a lovely place full of color and sound and hope.  But this deepest, darkest well was what mattered the most

So I started writing to figure out what it was, and that feeling is the first section of my novel Walking With Her Daughter.  I figured it out.  So did she.

A few weeks ago, I awoke from an amazing dream, one with plot and character and theme.  I lay flat on my back, staring at the wooden beams on the ceiling and thought, holy cow.  That was a gift.

So I got up and wrote down what I could remember.  Now, I'm trying to figure it out on the page.  Of course, the flu has made the writing hard these past couple of days, but I've been at it for a few weeks.  The dream led me to story, and I'm trying to catch up by writing it into novel.

I don't know if anything will come of this.  Lately, I've been writing things that not everyone is doing cartwheels over.  But I'm taking the gift and spreading it out in front of me, making sure not to waste any part.

Jessica