Presumably, most people reading this blog are dreaming about publishing their writing. Hey, me too. But this week, I was thinking about one of my writing friends whose bio talks about her many dreams. Her dreams of publishing are coming true now, but her other dreams—which have also come true!—included such disparate things as becoming an opera singer and dancing ballet. Yep.

Publishing is one of my dreams, and the one I’m working hardest to pursue right now. (You know, outside of my family life and the battle against the mess.) But I have other dreams, too.

One of my dreams isn’t really a secret, but I don’t think the people I’ve shared it with realize that I’m actually serious. I want to be in a band. Really. I don’t want to storm the charts and sell gold records. My dream doesn’t even require recording or writing original songs. A cover band is great: I would love to perform my favorite songs from my favorite artists.

This dream isn’t that far fetched. I’ve played the piano for 20 years and have a decent singing voice. Virtually my entire family is musically talented. I even know what venues we’d play and how to get in. In fact, the biggest problems are that 1.) we don’t have a drummer and 2.) we live thousands of miles apart.

But if we do get to live closer to one another, I have every intention of doing this. I’m even working on our set list. You know, whenever I think of it (3-4 times a year).

I think I would be remiss here if I didn’t mention my family as one of my dreams. While I’m already living that dream, and it’s definitely not easy all the time, it’s probably the more important and more valuable than all my other dreams combined.

I have smaller dreams, too—more like goals, really. Things like not killing every plant in my garden one year, having a lovely home, and designing a few pieces of knitwear (I have the ideas and knitting ability, but not the design skill yet). Things I’ll all (probably) do—someday, one thing at a time.

And then there are the more fleeting, flitting, wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if ones: becoming an FBI agent (yeah, because that’s something you undertake lightly, uh huh), getting back into Irish dance, recording a few original arrangements with my family, becoming a fantastically awesome quilt artist (never having made a quilt myself, or even seen an art quilt up close, LOL). These are more of the things I think “that would be so coooool!!” about, but realistically probably won’t make a priority any time soon.

So, what are your other dreams? Are they attainable? Are you going to pursue them, or do you just enjoy the idea?

Photo by Jake Bellucci

This morning, it happened to me again. I had a dream. And not just any dream, a dream: one of those dreams that inspires a big, big story.

I’ve sketched out the characters from the dream, the scene, the basic plot idea, and I did a little research (it was a historical dream). Evernote (which I learned about yesterday via The Creative Penn) is my new friend. I haven’t decided if this is what I should write next, although what I was planning to work on is only slightly less sketchy at this point .

I’ve had a couple stories begin as dreams before, and so far, that’s probably my most common source for story ideas. What’s yours?

Oh, and if you’re wondering, the post title is from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?

But I’m not afraid to admit that I know it more from Willy Wonka.

I love hearing this from other writers. Where do you get most of your story ideas from?

Photo by Gravity X9