Dreaming about writing
The text finding from the other side. Dreamers can no more produce stable writing than read it: the words do not stay, the pen does not work, or the sentence is gone by the time the next one is written.
Also searched as: writing in a dream, trying to write, a pen that will not work, writing that will not stay
The characteristic report is loss. The dreamer writes, looks back, and the words are different, absent, or in a script they cannot read.
A pen that will not mark is the second and is the ordinary motor finding: the action is attempted and produces nothing.
Writing something important and being unable to finish is the third, and it is the unresolving-task structure with unusually high stakes attached.
Writers and students report these more, which is the plain continuity effect, and they report them before deadlines.
Common associations
- Text that will not persist, from the producing side.
- A pen that does not work.
- Something important, unfinished.
- Deadlines, in the continuity reports.
Positive readings
This is a strong reality check and an under-used one. Writing a word and reading it back asks the dream for consistency twice in a row, which is more demanding than simply reading.
Dreamers who write awake have this available almost every night.
Difficult readings
Genuinely frustrating for people whose work is writing, and the reports cluster before real deadlines.
Where something must be written and cannot be, the dream is unresolving in the standard way and it is worth grouping there rather than reading it.
Psychological perspectives
Text instability is well documented and is used as a reality check. What this entry adds is that generation fails as well as perception: a dream cannot hold a sentence it has just produced, because there is no persistent record for it to hold.
That is consistent with everything else here. Dream content exists at the point of attention and is not stored, so anything requiring persistence, a written line, a counted total, a reflection, fails in the same way.
The non-working pen is the ordinary motor finding and needs nothing further.
Cultural and historical
Writing received in dreams appears in accounts across several traditions and is treated seriously in some, usually as instruction rather than as composition.
The famous modern anecdotes about work produced from dreams are anecdotes, and the music entry makes the same point at more length.
What the sleep science says
Well documented: text is unstable in dreams and is used as a reality check.
Well established: motor commands are not executed during REM.
Reasonably supported: dream content is generated at the point of attention rather than stored, which accounts for the failure of persistence.
Your own context
- Could you read back what you wrote?
- Did the pen work?
- Were you trying to finish something real?
- Do you write for a living?
If this recurs
Log with the reading and text failures. Together they make the most practically useful group on the site for anybody working on lucidity.
Emotions often reported
- frustration
- urgency
- effort
- confusion
- anxiety
- fatigue
Specific writing dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Could I read what I had written?
- Did the pen work?
- Was there something real I need to write?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
4 references. What these labels mean
- 1.Lucid Dreaming Verified by Volitional Communication During REM SleepPeer-reviewed research
Stephen LaBerge, Lynne Nagel, William Dement and Vincent Zarcone (1980) · Perceptual and Motor Skills
Cited for: The eye-signalling experiments that established lucid dreaming as a verifiable state rather than a self-report.
- 2.Induction of Lucid Dreams: A Systematic Review of EvidencePeer-reviewed research
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Melanie Schädlich and Michael Schredl (2012) · Consciousness and Cognition
Cited for: That no induction technique has strong evidence of reliable effectiveness, and that the better-supported ones are cognitive rather than external.
- 3.The Brain as a Dream State Generator: An Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis of the Dream ProcessPeer-reviewed research
J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley (1977) · American Journal of Psychiatry
Cited for: The activation-synthesis model: that dream narrative is partly the forebrain making sense of brainstem-generated activity.
- 4.Dreaming: A Conceptual Framework for Philosophy of Mind and Empirical ResearchAcademic book
Jennifer M. Windt (2015) · MIT Press
Cited for: A modern philosophical treatment of what dreams are, including the immersive-spatiotemporal-hallucination account and the status of dream reports as evidence.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of writing have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- SymbolBookBooks are reported almost entirely through the failure to read them, and that failure is one of the few dream phenomena with a solid explanation behind it: text in dreams is genuinely unstable.
- SymbolLetterLetters in dreams are almost never read. The characteristic report is an envelope that is not opened, or is opened and cannot be made out, and the dreamer usually knows who it is from without evidence.
- EventExaminationThe exam dream is the most reported anxiety dream there is, it persists for decades after leaving education, and there is some evidence that having it before a real exam is associated with doing better.
- SymbolScreenScreens in dreams do not work, and the reason is not symbolic. A screen is a surface covered in text and fine detail, which is precisely what dreams cannot render, so the reports are dominated by failure to read.
- ActionBuilding somethingWhat is built does not hold. Dreamers describe assembling something that comes apart, will not fit, or is wrong when they step back, and the stepping back is when it goes wrong.
- ActionCountingDreams do not count, and once you know that a great deal of otherwise strange dream content becomes ordinary. A total recounted comes out differently, because there was never a fixed number of things.
Records that mention writing
These pages link to writing, either as something reported in the same dream or as a related subject. This page does not point back at all of them, so the list is assembled rather than chosen.