Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Dreaming...

It is such a vivid dream - a dream of Japanese peasants in the early 1600s - a dream so real I can feel the cold, marshy wetness of the soil in my hands, so clear I can smell the sickly sweet and heavy aroma of that soil mixed with perspiration.

When the dream takes me to the home of the samurai, I am sure I can feel the gritty texture of grime, charcoal and soot from the cooking fire; it piles in dark, heavy layers on the walls. And yes, I can even taste the dull, bland flavor of unsalted red beans in a thin, hot broth.

Then the peasant warrior and his small entourage set sail across the Pacific Ocean, and so vivid is the dream that I am overwhelmed by the vastness and the loneliness of that unending expanse. It is a desert with dunes of rolling salt water that stretches from horizon to horizon. I feel in the pit of my stomach the aching turmoil of seasickness which plagues the weary travelers. My mind shrinks in upon itself in awareness of my own insignificance in contrast to that vast, landless desert.

The dream ends, not when I awake, but when I fall asleep, for the dream is not mine; it is the dream of a Japanese writer named Shusaku. He shares his dream with me every night as I lie in bed reading.

This is the power of a well-crafted book.

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