Dreams and Creative Writing: A review of a New York Times article by ThomasFleming, Instant novels? In your dreams

Dreams and Creative Writing: A review of a New York Times article by Thomas
Fleming, Instant novels? In your dreams!

Dreams do they spawn creative ideas in writers? Well known authors Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are said to have found inspiration in their dreams for their writing (Temple of Dreams). This article is somewhat like a phenomenological study, in the way the author describes his own experiences of dreams and creative writing. Thomas Fleming describes several instances in which dreams played a major role in several of his novels. Fleming (2000) is convinced that dreams help illuminate some of the unconscious thoughts a writer has on a subject.

The psychologist in me finds this an interesting idea and asks the following question. Does a creative mind form dreams that are more easily recalled or is it that recalled dreams provide fuel for the creative process? This article mentions no experiments or studies that may have be...