BY. KRISTEN LAMB

Maybe I’m partial, but I happen to think that writers have the coolest dreams. We should in that we use our imagination almost more than any other field. Unlike film or music or painting, we have to evoke entire worlds and all five senses using black letters on a white page.

WOW!

I’ve always had really vivid dreams. In fact my dreams are often better at seeing truths that I maybe am too chicken to face. For instance, when my life is all disorganized and I am being lazy and not tending what needs tending…I dream of tornadoes. When I have some person in my life that I need to confront, I dream of sharks.

Not too long ago, I dreamed I was walking up a road where I used to live, and a wild rhino had escaped the zoo. Anyway, the sucker chased me and ran me over like a freight train. So how did I interpret this? Hmmmm….maybe I need to revisit my overburdened schedule.  Perhaps my subconscious was showing me a vivid picture of the consequences of not saying NO enough.

I still have this dream where my high school guidance counselor knocks on my door and tells me there was a mistake. I never really graduated high school and thus my degree from T.C.U. is null and void. And, because it has been so long, many of my credits no longer count, so I am expected to start tenth grade on Monday even though I am almost forty.

Oh and there is the personal favorite, the dream where I am enrolled in school but apparently I haven’t been showing all semester. As I walk into a class I have never seen, I am handed the final exam. GASP!

I hear these last two are pretty common dreams for perfectionistic overachievers. I have no idea why I would be having them *whistles innocently.*

Yet, the odd thing about dreams is that sometimes it just seems like my brain is defragging, because that is the only conceivable reason I can imagine that Michael Jackson and a chorus line of squirrels could keep company in my gray matter. I loved those sleeping pill commercials where they guy would see Abe Lincoln and the talking beaver in his kitchen. I can so relate.

Anyway, all of this brings me to my point—yes, I do have one. Sometimes my brain is so weird it freaks me out, and I think, “Only in the mind of a writer.” This last week I watched American Psycho with Christian Bale…right before bed. Yeah, probably not the brightest move, especially since I think Christian Bale is the Jack Nicholson of our generation.

He’s just got that “you need an ax” energy.

So here is what my brain did with this information. In my dream, I was married to Christian Bale Dark Knight Batman. Not only was I married to him, but apparently we were going through a nasty divorce and custody battle. To make matters worse, apparently Batman didn’t want a divorce and had kind of gone all Sleeping with the Enemy. 

I have a feeling that I finally got the nerve to leave him because I was tired of him freaking out every time I didn’t fold his bat cape correctly or organize his bat tools facing forward. Just guessing. Anyway the entire dream is me—normal person lacking any cool gadgets or super powers—trying to run away from a superhero who has gone foaming-at-the-mouth-raving-crazy.

I ran through parking garages and dove under cars and just about the time I found a safe hiding place? Our infant son starts crying, giving away our position in the bushes. WTH? I know. It was actually pretty terrifying.

But it did make me think. Can you imagine being Mary-Jane Watson dealing with a Spiderman who didn’t want to pay alimony? Or being the daughter of Superman who missed curfew and got caught making out with her boyfriend? Ah, the dreams writers have.

So after a week pondering this dream and running it through the Freudian-Jungian litmus tests? I’m just tossing it in the box with Elvis and the Slip and Slide.

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Kristen is the author of the new best-selling book,  in addition to the #1 best-selling books We Are Not Alone—The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer. She’s a contributing humor blogger for SocialIn, a blog that reaches 2.5 million and blogs for The Huffington Post. You can also follow her author blog here. She is also the Social Media Columnist for Author Magazine. Feel free to follow her on Twitter at and on