Dreaming Stories

I dream stories. Always. The stories might be glimpses at my own special brand of insanity, but there's always a plot. There's always a goal, this relates to that(action and consequence), and there are themes. Themes that seem to have nothing to do with my daily life. For years, it's been a running thing with my family and friends, me telling my dreams. Frequently they are answered with: I would watch that or I would read that. A decade ago, when the idea that I could ever write was just a dyslexic fantasy, I ignored it every time someone suggested I write the dream-story down.

My husband, during pre-husband days, harangued me into making a character on the roleplaying game where he played. I didn't want to. I was terrified. Everyone would know I was a bad writer. No one would want to play with me. I made him make the character, and every now and then I would stumble onto the grid, run into someone, type a ridiculously bad sentence, and then flee. I did this until some storyline happened I couldn't bear not being part of, and that one story-arc got me addicted to the whole thing. That's what got me started writing.

Over the next several years, I worked on my writing chops on online text-based RPGs, and didn't consider that I could be a writer. Not until the past 3-4 years did I give it serious thought. Then, my dreams became a way for me to try and build some platform of confidence that I was pursuing an entirely reachable goal. God, the Universe, my subconscious... whatever your moral compass is directed by... wanted me to be a storyteller. It had been giving me stories for years, so I could do this.

The natural progression was to begin writing romance -- that's what I read, after all. But I don't dream romance stories. I dream science fiction, almost entirely. Aliens? Yup. Psychic phenomena? Yep. But I also dream anthropological, alternate-universe, society-based science fiction. If my whateveryoubelieve-spiritual-divining-rod gives me stories, and I use that fact as some kind of guidepost to assure myself I'm finally doing what I am supposed to be doing, shouldn't I be writing that kind of story?

Do you dream stories? Do you ever incorporate real dreams into your plots?