I'm SO uninspired to write down my dreams, plz help!

I remember enough of my dreams to get some good writing going, but lately I’ve just been so uninspired write down my NDs dreams because firstly they’ve been very stupid and boring and useless.

Do you set a time limit on writing down dreams? It usually takes me a while and I just don’t feel like writing that long. Is it ok to set a time limit even if I’ll get down maybe only 50% of what I remember?

Another problem is… how much detail do I have to go into? I don’t feel like writing how every tiny thing looked around me and how the clouds were and the sky and what the people I was talking to looked like, etc etc.!!!

I NEED SOME TIPS!

Instead of writing them why don’t you use some sort of voice recorder and then you won’t have to write anything, it would only take about 2 minutes too?

I usually write down my dreams the morning or if I wake up in the night just after having one, I never really fall behind.

writing isn’t a necessity. it depends on what your goals are.

i don’t write mine. sometimes i regret this.

I’m doing my best to write mine down, but since I’ve just started, I haven’t gotten into the swing of doing it yet.

The recording idea sounds nice, I might have to check into getting some kind of taping device. Maybe when I can afford an mp3 player…

Back in the day, I used to be enthusiastic about writing my dreams as well, but lately I haven’t bothered with writing them down, either. Don’t worry about it. As for the state that my dreams are in lately, they have been increasingly interesting to me. It’s almost a shame that I don’t write them down, really. Even so, don’t worry about it. You still have the option of recording them with your voice, if that doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable. Personally, I would feel a bit ackward doing this. :eek:

I have to write my dreams down or I’ll not remember the good details of a lucid dream. I was wondering if anyone took shortcuts to writing a dream down.

Lately I haven’t been writing down my dreams (well, I’ve started back up again, but only just today). Instead, when I wake up, I try to go over the dream thoroughly in my head even though I know I’m not going to end up writing it down. I figure I’m at least getting some DR practice that way, albeit probably not much.

For myself, I find that if I jot down notes (not full-fledged prose) on particularly vivid dreams, I can come back to those notes later and recall most if not all of the dream from them. Then I’m free to do the actual writing whenever I want. This doesn’t work with all of my dreams, though - right now, I’m looking at some older dreams for which I only have notes, and I don’t have a clue what they were about. :tongue:

I’ve been thinking about voice recording, since I think it would be easier for me to do, especially in the middle of the night… but I share my bed with someone else and I don’t know how annoying I would end up being. ^^;

you: click, record… “I am in a large room, I see a woman staring at me at one end of the room, she looks sad. I’ve not ever seen this place before and so I do a reality check…”

the person you share a bed with: what THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

yep. :\

the thing is that I’m going away for a year without access to any computer or anything… I’ll only have my dreams to look forward to, so I just need to get good at lucid dreaming before I leave. I need to learn to write down my dreams isntead of typing them on my computer. :sad: I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to write down a dream, I’ll be busy all morning to night, don’t really know what will be happening.

As far as taking shortcuts for recording your dreams, I use the following system to prompt me to remember the rest of the dream before I write it out in full:

Structure like this:

Main theme
[i] - sub theme

  • sub theme
  • sub theme[/i]

For example:

Dark, Creepy Forest
[i] - My cat running around, playing with a puppy

  • Flying through branches
  • Small go cart travel with mum[/i]

It may not make sense to others, but for you it provides great cues without being overly lengthy. I use this system for boring dreams, using descriptive words to avoid unnecessarily lengthy and agonising prose.

I really like the idea of that, Snape. I’ll have to adopt it to my own dream journal; that way, I can avoid spending long, agonizing hours writing down my longer dreams. :cool_laugh:

Then don’t bother. There’s nothing to kill motivation like stupid boring things. Or if you do, just for the record, make it one sentence long. I never bother writing down the less interesting dreams. I could be spending my time doing other things that are more productive. There’s no rule that says you have to write down everything - in fact, most of my favourite dream journals are only updated once or twice a month, or even less.

Never. If a dream is worth writing up at all, it’s worth writing up properly. Sometimes I’m strapped for time and have to summarise, but I always put more effort into the best parts.

Well, I wouldn’t personally. Sometimes I sit down to write what I think will be a shortish dream, but it turns out much longer in writing than I’d expected, or vice-versa.

You don’t HAVE to do anything. It’s your journal. If you ask me, though (and you just did, hehe), detail is always important. As I’ve said, I think either dreams are worth writing up properly, or not at all. Plus, it’s much more interesting to read when you look back over it later.

Hey, just as long as you tell your SC that it’s important, that should be good enough for you to still have decent DR.

There’s a very obvious correlation to my dream recall and number of lucid dreams, and a correlation to writing down my dreams and dream recall. Get it? My goal here is lucid dreaming, and I need to learn a way to quickly and effectively write down my dreams. I won’t have a lot of time during the year away.

writing them down after you wake up from them would be an interesting form of WBTB.

ahhh nice dream, what time is it… 12 midnight… whoa…
gets up and writes

dreams again
ahhh that was a boring dream… what time is it… 2a.m… geeze…
writes down dream

dreams again man that was hilarious…only 3 a.m. !!!

etc.

That’s good to hear. :wink: I haven’t bothered with writing down my dreams in ages. In spite of that, my dream recall is still doing well, and I also still find my dreams to be interesting. Even with all of that, I just feel too lazy to write any of it down lately. Perhaps later I’ll take the time to do all of that work, but for now I’d rather relax for once!

when i write down my dreams, my dreams are just so much better. I remember things I want to remember and remember the LOOONGEST dreams and every step of them. I also have lucid dreams a lot more frequently. Writing down your dreams is NOT overrated, don’t forget that!

Something similar is happening to me. Before i officially had a dream journal (i basically had a small binder of index cards to write down interesting dreams). I used to have such interesting dreams. These all included Zombies, and different locations then i already know of. But now that i write them down every night, i see that they are more or less normal. Is this because i am writing them down every night, and not just writing them down when they interest me?

Because thinking back, i did have some interesting ones…hmm

I pretty much have interesting dreams all the time…something to do with me playing in my imagination half the day I suppose… =P

Have this problem too…same for the same reason I never kept a diary…someone might read it! << >>

meh. Someone say something push me over the edge to start recording please. =P I’m SOO…secretive when it comes to the things that go on inside my head.

The correlation between recording dreams and recalling dreams is clear - but don’t be fooled into thinking that there is a clear cause and effect relationship directly between recall and frequency of lucidity.
Rather, it’s probably more likely that you simply forget lucid dreams when your recall is not as good as it should be (which I think is what you were saying, so excuse me if I just parroted you in my own words :tongue:)

I remember any lucid dream I have, even if I don’t remember anything about the dream. I’m not forggetting I dreamt lucidly, I am simply not as aware as what is the dream world and what is the waking world if I don’t have good dream recall. When one dreams lucidly, they are able to think to themselves while in the dream to make sure they remember details when they wake up. Usually, I wake up from a lucid dream and in the dream I know I am waking up thus it’s really not very likely I will forget I dreamt lucidly.