Do You Remember Your Dreams?

When Maureen had me fill out the questionnaire for Get Lost in a Story blog one of the questions was do you remember your dreams?
I always remember my dreams. Or at least I think I do. But I also know that I can have several in one night.

I have vivid, action packed story driven dreams. Sometimes scary, sometimes adventures. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with a sense of exhaustion like I'm Indiana Jones and have just recovered the lost ark.

Every time I think… can that be a book? Crazily enough I can even analyze that mid-dream. While I'm dreaming I think… "Oh wow this is so much fun, what an adventure, will this make a book?"

Sadly, not one has ever panned out for me in book form. When I wake up a lot of the dream fades and the pieces don't seem to fit together. And when I start to think about the "plot" I suddenly see with my cool morning logic that it was all just a bunch of crazy nonsense.

I've heard stories about people eating certain foods or doing certain exercises to enhance dreaming just so they might unleash some subconscious idea. Luckily I'm an active dreamer so that's never been necessary for me. But obviously some consider dreaming a tool for writers. Like the idea for Harry Potter is in there somewhere and if they just let themselves go in sleep and it will all come to them.

Last night I had a dream like that. It was a fantasy based children's story. Just a broad stroke crazy concept that when I woke up I was like wow… that's cool. Too bad I'm not a fantasy children's writer!

So what about you all? Do you remember dreams? Do you use them to help your creativity? Or are they all just crazy chaos?