Hello! I recently finally decided to start writing my dreams down. But when i started, i soon(first night) came to a problem. My dreams are too long. My dream(nightmare actually) i remembered in the middle of night was five A4 pages long. It took me two days to write it down. And by the time i was finished i had 3 more dreams to write down. On average there is 2 main dreams i recall during the night. One when i wake up in the middle of night and other one in the morning. I believe they consist of series of smaller dreams, but the thing is, when put together, they take too much time to write them down. Option of recording them vocally is out. So im asking for an advice what could/should i do?
Well, you could try to write in less detail. Just write down the general idea. This isn’t usually recommended, but since you already had a very long dream I don’t know if this is a good idea, I’d also have trouble writting down such a long dream lol
I only write a lot when I feel it’s worth it in some way.
Well yeah, i really don’t want to write in less detail, and i don’t want to choose dreams which to write down and which not to because they all are awesome Bah! I’m kinda in a dead end situation but will have to either commit myself to spend more hours of day to writing dreams or leave something out. Anyways thanks for your reply! More advice is wellcome
If I could pitch in, My problem was pretty similar. After I ended up with a nine-pager back in 2007 I got fed up and started to record my dreams with a dictation device. All I need to do is talk and my dreams get recorded, it became a whole lot faster once I got used to it (learning to cut out all my "um"s and awkward pauses and such).
The particularly long or interesting dreams are still copied down by hand afterward though, since my recall goes up if I still hand-write dreams in a journal. Just like everything else to do with dreams your mileage may vary, but hopefully you can make something of this
Most people write dream journal to remember their dreams better. It sounds like you’re really good at that already
Over the years, I’ve often stopped journaling when I start spending too much time writing things down in the morning.
Voice recorder can be quicker, but if that’s not an option,
then I’d recommend a system of jotting down keywords that will trigger the memories when you can come back at another point in the day (preferably same day) to write it out more.
Another option I’ve used occasionally, is to type out the dream from those jotted down notes, as I can usually type a heck of a lot faster than handwriting, and much more legible too
Another trick with the quick-form, especially when you remember the dream in bits and pieces not necessarily in order, is to box up groups of keywords: place, feelings, dc’s, major symbols, etc… ; and then draw little lines and arrows between the boxes to help with ‘which came first’
One note of caution: I have had a few times, I go back to a bit of notes, look down at 3-4 words, and simply don’t recall a bit of the dream, wondering what the &%^ was I dreaming… but accept the losses, move on, it’s a balancing act: learning to write out enough that you’ll remember the dream fully later in the day, but not so much you spend too much time in the middle of the morning.
Hope this helps!