I'm sitting here on my ratty futon watching the steam from my coffee cup curl upwards into interesting plumes, backlit by the morning light from my window. I'm thinking about a dream I had last night which was, to the best of my knowledge and recollection, the first dream about writing and the business thereof that I've ever had.
In this phantasm, my editor--I don't actually have an editor, but I have a fan who is an editor, so Central Dream Casting put her in that role--brought me and my manuscript to the offices of some other, nameless Uber Editor. It was the kind of facilitated introduction that represents a potential leap from one level of practice to another, like an Aughar becoming a Nath Baba and getting his conchae pierced. I never saw the man clearly...he sat behind a large desk, backed by an expansive half-moon window full of daylight, and separated from us by a curtain made from multiple strips of translucent wobbly plastic, the kind they use when they bring you to a converted aircraft hangar to show you the wreckage of a spacecraft and the alien bodies. I know that he was older, tall, thinly built with gray-white hair, and that he wore either a pale yellow dress shirt or a vest of the same color.
I gave my chapters to my editor, who handed them through the curtain. Almost immediately, the man behind the curtain reached into a file cabinet, then pushed a paper back through the flexible slats and let it fall to the floor. I retrieved it. On this paper, covering both sides, was the Uber Editor's list of Things That Make for Bad Writing. Specifics, with examples. It was revelation! I went down the list, wincing every time I came across an item that I knew was in my manuscript...some of them on the first page. Even if Uber Editor rejected the book, as I was sure he would, at the very least I would have this singular list.
I'm annoyed that I can't remember a damn thing that was on that paper. I'm pretty sure that it was a message from my subconscious, and that if i could recall its contents my writing would improve immeasurably. That's how it seemed right after I woke up, as I lay in bed struggling to affix the dream details into my groggy brain. It was a gen-yu-wine vision!
Apparently there were too many violations of the list, so Uber Editor handed my chapters back through the plastic curtain, and my editor and I made our way from that place to another place, using my Inter-Regional Dream Transport system. Everyone has one of those; that's how you bop from one locale to another while sleeping. My memory of the events beyond this point is disconnected and fuzzy, a series of impressions: a room in my editor's house or apartment, walled with dark brick; carpets; bookshelves; a hanging lamp hand wrought of pale amber glass and dark metal. I know we discussed the manuscript, but I don't know what we said about it.
I had the peculiar sense that I wasn't disheartened by the Uber Editor's response, and I didn't feel discouraged upon awakening. In fact, I'm glad that my subconscious seems to be working on this whole writing thing, to the extent that it's running through scenarios important enough to cross over into waking memory.
I suppose that I should add an additional interpretive paragraph or two, but I'm not inclined to do so at the moment. So think up something clever and pretend that I wrote it.
Never let an All Hallow's Eve pass without asking the eternal question: dude, what the fuck is wrong with German people?
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