My subconscious and I have never really gotten along. There’s a vicious little bastard running things down there in the darkness and apparently he doesn’t like me much. Night after night, he puts together the most twisted shit he can and runs a nightmare double-feature. Which is, in itself, annoying. I would like to get through the night without my family and friends getting wiped out in a post-apocalyptic landscape or without having to fight off zombies while Hayden Panettiere explains why we should just be friends.
But the thing that really annoys me is that I can’t USE any of these dreams for story ideas. They’re derivative, unoriginal and sometimes just outright steal ideas from books, movies or stories. Christ, I would think I can be more original than just lifting the entire plot from Aliens night after night, but apparently I can’t.
It depresses me because I have to wonder what it says about me if my dream apparatus can’t be bothered to be more creative than this. I’ll just hope that the thieving, unimaginative bastard part of me is sated with these lackluster entries in the horror field.
What’s worse is sometimes I’ll wake up and immediately after the dream think, “Hey, this could be an interesting story.” I’ll start to scribble it down and as I write, notice how it bodily lifts from that book I just read and added a bit of the Exorcist for good measure. And that’s the stuff that makes sense. Everything else is junk drawer crazy that doesn’t really knit well into a plot.
If I’m going to sleep badly, I’d like to get something out of it, but, so far, the most I’ve gotten from it is two or three blog entries where I complain about how much my sleep sucks. So thanks for nothing Subconscious.
Dylan Charles
dylancharles.net 
i think everyone’s dreams seem pretty cool upon waking, but then they realize that it’s all a bunch of crazy afterwards. i don’t think you need to be disappointed about that.